Footsteps of Paul Tour

Footsteps of Paul tour itineraries are small-group trips in Greece built on the travels of Paul the Apostle. They run across Macedonia, Athens and the north Aegean. Sections cover the Areopagus, Amphipolis, Apollonia, Veria, the Via Egnatia, Thessaloniki and Mytilene on Lesbos. Later parts turn to Paul’s letters, his companions and early Christian communities. The last section holds four brief answers. Linked pages cover the classical Greece tour, the 4 day classical tour and the Athens Delphi Meteora tour. Every trip on the site sits under Greece tours.

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What is a Footsteps of Paul tour?

A Footsteps of Paul tour is a small-group trip in Greece shaped around Paul the Apostle. He was born Saul of Tarsus around AD 5 and died around AD 64 or 65. In Christian use, an apostle is a messenger sent to share a faith.

On a Footsteps of Paul tour, the central figure carries two names. Saul was his Jewish name. Paulus, his Latin name, means small. He used Paulus as a second name with a Greco-Roman audience. Greco-Roman describes the shared world of Greek and Roman culture around the Mediterranean. Latin was the speech of the Romans.

Paul came from Tarsus, a city in the Roman province of Cilicia. A province was a large area under Roman rule. The author of Acts, an early Christian book, sorts Paul’s missionary journeys into three separate accounts. A missionary journey here means a long trip taken to carry a faith to new places.

During the first century AD, Paul worked as a Christian apostle and spread what Jesus taught. In Acts, a night vision showed Paul a man of Macedonia. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, that man stood and begged Paul to come to Macedonia. A vision is a scene seen in the mind, as in a dream.

• Citizenship: According to Acts, Paul held Roman citizenship, the legal status of a citizen of Rome.
• Second journey: Paul set out from Jerusalem on his second missionary journey in late autumn of AD 49.
• Communities: Paul set up Christian groups across Asia Minor and Europe between the mid-40s and mid-50s AD.

In Athens, Acts says, Paul preached each day in the synagogue and the Agora. Jews gather in a synagogue for prayer, and the Agora was the market square. In the Acts account behind a Footsteps of Paul tour, Paul continued from Athens to Corinth.

Why does the Areopagus hill matter for a Footsteps of Paul tour in Athens?

A Footsteps of Paul tour story in Athens turns on the Areopagus sermon. No other speech in Paul’s missionary career is as dramatic or as fully reported. A sermon is a talk on faith or morals, given to a gathered audience.

Before Athens, Paul’s preaching had led to conflict in Thessalonica and Berea, two cities in northern Greece. In the Footsteps of Paul tour story, he was then carried to Athens for safety. Acts says the sight of a city full of idols distressed Paul. An idol is a statue or image honoured as a god.

Within a Footsteps of Paul tour story, his new ideas met confusion and wonder among Epicureans and Stoics. Both groups followed schools of Greek philosophy, meaning shared ways of thinking about life and nature. They then took Paul to a meeting at the Areopagus, where he had to explain himself.

Paul opened by describing an altar he had seen in the city. Its inscription read TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. An inscription means letters carved on a surface such as stone. In the speech, Paul alluded to the Greek writers Epimenides and either Aratus or Cleanthes. To allude is to refer to something indirectly, without naming the source.

• Setting: It is unclear whether Paul spoke before the Areopagus Council or gave an informal talk on the hill.
• Meeting place: By his visit, the council is thought to have met in the agora, the market square, instead.
• Place: The Areopagus, meaning rock of Ares, held temples, cultural buildings and a high court.

One scholar, Robert Paul Seesengood, has proposed that preaching a foreign deity was against the law in Athens. A deity is a god or goddess. On that view, the sermon behind a Footsteps of Paul tour was part lecture and part trial.

How does Amphipolis on the Strymon fit into a Footsteps of Paul tour of Macedonia?

A Footsteps of Paul tour story passes Amphipolis, as Paul and Silas did in the early AD 50s. The book of Acts places that passage between Philippi and Thessalonica. Acts is an early Christian account of the apostles and their work.

The ancient name lives on in Amphipoli, a modern municipality in the Serres regional unit. Greece splits each of its regions into regional units for local government. On a Footsteps of Paul tour, the city’s start goes back to Athens. A second Athenian attempt to settle the site, under the general Hagnon, succeeded in 437 BC.

The city’s first walls, built at that time, stretched for 7.5 km. Thucydides, a historian of ancient Greece, explained the city’s name. He said it comes from the Strymon River, which flows around the city on two sides. In ancient Greek, amphi means around and polis means city.

Excavations at Amphipolis have uncovered four basilicas with rich mosaic floors. Here, a basilica means a long church hall with a central aisle. In church history behind a Footsteps of Paul tour, a bishop of Amphipolis is first named in 533. A bishop oversees the Christian churches of a district.

• Remains: Amphipolis was an ancient Greek city that later became Roman, and large remains still stand.
• Lion: The famous lion of Amphipolis is thought to mark the burial place of three Macedonian admirals.
• Roman rule: After 168 BC, Amphipolis became capital of one of four Roman mini-republics, called merides.

In the Footsteps of Paul tour story of Amphipolis, later centuries brought wealth. During Late Antiquity, the town gained from Macedonia’s rising prosperity, and a large number of churches went up. Late Antiquity is the period that links the Roman world to the Middle Ages.

What does Apollonia in Mygdonia add to a Footsteps of Paul tour story?

A Footsteps of Paul tour story names Apollonia, one of the towns in Acts. Paul and his companions passed through it on their second missionary journey. They came from Amphipolis and were heading for Thessalonica. Acts is an early Christian book about the apostles.

Apollonia stood south of Lake Volvi and north of the Chalcidian mountains. Its remains are identified with Bountroumia, an archaeological site near modern Nea Apollonia. Nea is the Greek word for new. Archaeology is the study of past remains. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the site belongs to Central Macedonia, a region of Greece.

Apollonia served travellers and officials as a stopping point on the Via Egnatia, a Roman road. They were moving through Macedonia, then a Roman province. A province was a territory governed by Rome. The town walls formed a circuit of about 3.1 kilometres, reinforced with towers. A circuit is a ring that runs all the way round.

The text of Acts gives no sign of a long stay in Apollonia by Paul. It records no Christian community founded there either. In the Footsteps of Paul tour story, the site holds Christian remains, among them an Early Christian basilica. The word basilica names a church laid out as a hall with aisles.

• Size: The settlement covered around 33 hectares, a metric land unit, with cemeteries outside the walls.
• Finds: Excavations have produced a gold ivy-leaf wreath and a marble statue of Nike, the victory goddess.
• First mention: The earliest historical reference to Apollonia comes from the Hellenica, a history by Xenophon.

For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the identification rests partly on a Latin inscription that names the city. Inscriptions are words cut into a durable material. Evidence from the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian also helped confirm the site.

Which Acts story ties Veria, the old Berea, to a Footsteps of Paul tour in northern Greece?

A Footsteps of Paul tour story knows Veria under its older names, Beroea or Berea. Paul preached in the city, and its people ranked among the earliest Christians of the Roman Empire. Veria today is a city in Central Macedonia, northern Greece.

In Acts, the move to Berea takes place at night. Once darkness fell, fellow believers in Thessalonica sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. Within the Footsteps of Paul tour account, the pair went first to the Jewish synagogue. A synagogue is a building where Jews gather for prayer and the reading of scripture.

Acts calls the people of the town Bereans. Each day they studied the Scriptures to test whether Paul’s words were true. Scriptures are the sacred writings of a faith. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the stay ended in a split. Silas and Timothy remained at Berea, while Paul was sent on to the coast.

His escorts then took Paul all the way to Athens. An escort is a person who goes with a traveller for protection. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, Veria shows evidence of settlement as early as 1000 BC. Settlement means a group of homes where people live together.

• Koinon: The Koinon of Macedonians, a league of Macedonian communities, had its seat at Veria.
• Irenopolis: Tradition says Empress Irene rebuilt and enlarged the city and called it Irenopolis after herself.
• Church rank: After 1261, the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos made the local see, or bishop’s seat, an archbishopric.

For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the name Berea has a later life too. Protestant groups called Bereans are named after the city. Protestant refers to one of the main branches of Christianity, the faith built on the teachings of Jesus.

What was the Via Egnatia in the Footsteps of Paul tour narrative?

A Footsteps of Paul tour story runs along the Via Egnatia, an ancient Roman road. The Romans built it in the 2nd century BC. Paul used it on his second missionary journey, from Philippi to Thessalonica. Via is the Latin word for road.

The road crossed three Roman provinces: Illyricum, Macedonia and Thracia. That ground now lies in Albania, Greece, North Macedonia and European Turkey. A province was a region governed for Rome by an appointed official. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the whole road ran for about 1,120 km in total.

At about six metres across, the road had large polygonal stone slabs paving its surface. Polygonal describes a shape with straight sides and corners. Milestone inscriptions record that the order to build it came from Gnaeus Egnatius, proconsul of Macedonia. A milestone is a marker stone set beside a road. A proconsul was a Roman governor.

Rome built the road to join a chain of Roman colonies between the Adriatic and the Bosphorus. A colony was a town settled by Roman citizens. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the road was Rome’s main link with its eastern empire. That changed when Augustus opened a route further north.

• Milestones: Surviving milestones mark the road for 860 kilometres, as far as the border of Macedonia and Thrace.
• Repairs: Emperor Trajan carried out extensive repairs before his campaign of 113 against the Parthians.
• Trade: Nearly all overland trade between the Byzantine, or eastern Roman, empire and western Europe used this road.

For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the road also keeps a folk name. In their native Aromanian language, the Aromanians call it Calea Mare, meaning the Big Road. A native language is the first language a person learns at home.

Which Thessaloniki story from about AD 50 shapes a Footsteps of Paul tour of the city?

A Footsteps of Paul tour story in Thessaloniki begins around AD 50. By then the city ranked among the early centres of Christianity. On his second missionary journey, Paul visited its chief synagogue on three Sabbaths. A Sabbath is the Jewish weekly day of rest.

His work there laid the ground for the city’s first Christian church. Here, church means a community of believers as well as a building. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the place of his teaching has a modern name. Paul taught in the district known today as the Upper City. A district is part of a city.

In Greek, the Upper Town is called Ano Poli. The great fire of 1917 did not engulf it. Ano Poli is also the highest point in Thessaloniki. It holds the city’s acropolis and its Byzantine fort, the Heptapyrgion. The term Byzantine points to the later eastern Roman world. An acropolis is a walled hilltop above a town.

Thessaloniki was founded at or near ancient Therma, along with 26 other villages of the area. In 41 BC, under Mark Antony, Thessalonica gained the rank of a free city within the Roman Republic. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, Thessalonica is the older Latin form of the name. A free city ran its own affairs.

• World Heritage: UNESCO listed the city’s early Christian and Byzantine buildings as World Heritage in 1988.
• Missionaries: Cyril and Methodius, natives of the city, created Old Church Slavonic, the first Slavic literary language.
• Ottoman era: After taking the city in 1430, the Ottomans settled in Ano Poli, the Upper Town.

For a Footsteps of Paul tour, Thessaloniki also has its own patron saint. In 306 AD, the city gained Saint Demetrius in that role. A patron saint is a holy figure seen as the special guardian of a place.

How does a Footsteps of Paul tour story reach Mytilene on Lesbos?

A Footsteps of Paul tour story reaches Mytilene on Lesbos in AD 56. Luke, Paul and their companions stopped there briefly. They were on the way back from Paul’s third missionary journey. Mytilene is the capital and administrative centre of the North Aegean Region.

The group had come by sea from Assos, a distance of about 50 km. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, Acts 20 sets out the next leg. From Mytilene, the travellers continued towards Chios. A leg is one stage of a longer journey. Acts 20 means chapter twenty of Acts, an early Christian book.

Ancient Mytilene began on a small island lying just off the coast. Later, that island was joined to Lesbos, creating a north and a south harbour. A channel linked the two early harbours. It measured 700 m in length and 30 m in width. A channel is a narrow waterway that ships can pass along.

The scholar Zacharias Rhetor came from Mytilene, and he was made Bishop of Mytilene. A bishop leads the priests and believers of one area. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the city was home to three 9th-century Byzantine saints who were brothers. Byzantine names the eastern Roman state that lasted through medieval times.

• Saint Therapon: Built in the richly decorated Baroque style, Saint Therapon’s church rises over the port.
• Saint Valentine: The Catholic Church of Theotokos, a Greek title for Mary, keeps part of the relics of Saint Valentine.
• Architecture: The town holds a large number of neoclassical buildings, styled on ancient Greek and Roman forms.

For a Footsteps of Paul tour, Mytilene stayed under Ottoman rule until the First Balkan War. That war came in 1912, and in November the Kingdom of Greece captured the city. Ottoman refers to the Turkish empire of the sultans.

Why does the First Epistle to the Thessalonians matter on a Footsteps of Paul tour?

Footsteps of Paul tours link to the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. The letter was sent to the church of Thessalonica, a city in modern Greece. An epistle is a formal letter. Here, the word church means a local group of Christian believers.

In Paul’s time, Thessalonica lay inside the Roman Empire, beside the Thermaic Gulf. A gulf is a wide bay. In the letter, Paul says the converts there had turned from idols. A convert is someone who takes up a new faith. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, this hints that those first believers were not Jewish.

Scholars widely agree that the letter is the oldest surviving Christian text. A majority of modern scholars date it to 49–51 AD. That span falls within Paul’s stay in Corinth, on the second of his missionary journeys. These were long trips made to spread a religious faith.

Early manuscripts carry added notes that name a different place of writing. These notes say Paul wrote the letter in Athens. In their account, he wrote after Timothy had come back from Macedonia. A manuscript is a text copied out by hand. So, for a Footsteps of Paul tour, the letter has links with both Athens and Corinth.

• Oldest copy: Papyrus 46, copied around AD 200, ranks among the earliest manuscripts that contain the letter.
• Senders: Paul writes for himself, Silas and Timothy, and gives thanks for the faith of the readers.
• Conduct: Paul recalls earning his own living while there, so that he was a burden to no one.

On grief, Paul explains that the dead will be raised before those still living. Both groups, he writes, will then meet the Lord in the air. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the passage gives the letter’s comfort to mourners in Thessalonica.

Who was Silas in the history behind a Footsteps of Paul tour?

Footsteps of Paul tours are tied to Silas, a leading figure among the first Christians. The New Testament says he went with Paul on his second missionary journey. A missionary is a person who travels to spread a religion.

His Roman name, Silvanus, means “of the forest”, and Paul always uses it. Silas itself is the Greek form of the Aramaic name Seila. Aramaic is an ancient language related to Hebrew. Seila, in turn, is a version of the Hebrew name Saul. In Footsteps of Paul tour stories, the man thus carries one name in two languages.

Silas first appears in chapter 15 of Acts. Acts is short for the Acts of the Apostles, a New Testament book. Church elders picked him there to travel back to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. Later, Silas and Paul were briefly jailed in Philippi. There, an earthquake shook loose their chains and threw open the prison door.

According to Acts 17–18, Paul moved on from Philippi to Thessalonica with Silas and Timothy. In that city, the three met hostility in the synagogues. The synagogue served the Jewish community as its place of prayer and study. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, those two chapters of Acts hold this part of his life.

• Art: Because of the earthquake story, art sometimes shows Silas carrying broken chains.
• Corinth: Paul went ahead to Athens, and the other two caught up with him in Corinth.
• Date: A note on the Roman governor Gallio in Acts dates these events to around AD 50.

The Eastern Orthodox Church honours Silas each year on July 30 with a feast day. That feast also honours apostles named Silvanus, Crescens, Epenetus and Andronicus. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the date gives Silas a fixed place in the Orthodox calendar.

How does Lydia of Thyatira enter the story of a Footsteps of Paul tour?

Footsteps of Paul tours recall Lydia of Thyatira, a woman commonly known as “The Woman of Purple”. Like her other titles, that nickname describes her own background. A nickname is an extra, informal name used alongside a person’s real one.

Another title, Purpuraria, is built on the Latin word for purple. It reflects her link with purple dye. She worked as a wealthy agent for a firm in Thyatira that sold purple dye. An agent sells goods on behalf of a business. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, Lydia is thus a woman of trade and means.

Her home city of Thyatira lay southeast of Pergamum, about 64 kilometres inland. It stood across the Aegean Sea from Athens. That stretch of open sea separates the Greek mainland from Turkey. Inland here means away from the coast. Thyatira was famous for a red variety of purple dye.

In the Footsteps of Paul tour story, Paul’s party met Lydia in the region of Philippi. Accounts call her a respected businesswoman who was possibly a widow. She was also a righteous Gentile, or “God-fearer”, drawn to Judaism. A Gentile is a person who is not Jewish. A God-fearer believed in the one God without fully converting.

• Hospitality: Paul’s party stayed in her house until leaving for Thessalonica through Amphipolis and Apollonia.
• Patron saint: The Catholic Church named her patroness of dyers, the protector of people who colour cloth.
• Icons: All known icons, or holy images, of Lydia show her with purple cloth in one form or another.

For a Footsteps of Paul tour, Lydia holds the Orthodox title “Equal to the Apostles”. An apostle is one of the first messengers of the Christian faith. The title signals her importance and level of holiness. Orthodox here means the Eastern Orthodox family of churches.

What does the Epistle to the Philippians add to a Footsteps of Paul tour?

Footsteps of Paul tours around Philippi connect with Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, sent to that city. The letter is credited to Paul, with Timothy listed beside him as co-sender. A co-sender is someone who joins in sending a letter.

In Acts, Paul and Silas face a charge of “disturbing the city” during their visit to Philippi. Since the 1960s, scholars have agreed the epistle joins fragments of three separate letters. A fragment is a surviving piece of a longer text. So, for a Footsteps of Paul tour, Philippi is the city that received all three letters.

The letter itself shows that Paul was in custody when he wrote it. Custody means being held under guard, as a prisoner. Scholars still debate which imprisonment the letter refers to. Rome, around 62 AD, ranks as the strongest candidate for the place of writing. Ephesus and Caesarea Maritima are the other cities scholars weigh.

Whatever its unity, the material was first written in Koine Greek. Koine was the common form of Greek used across the eastern Roman world. The writing dates from the 50s or early 60s AD. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the letter thus speaks in the everyday Greek of its time.

• Gift note: One fragment is a short note thanking the church in Philippi for gifts sent to Paul.
• Messenger: Paul thanks Epaphroditus, whom the Philippian church sent to him with gifts, for his devotion.
• Joy: The Lutheran writer Johann Albrecht Bengel summed up the whole letter as a call to rejoice.

The letter asks Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind. Each woman led a different house-group in Philippi, a church that met in a home. A Footsteps of Paul tour story thus names two women leaders in early Philippi.

Where do Priscilla and Aquila fit into a Footsteps of Paul tour?

Footsteps of Paul tour stories feature Priscilla and Aquila. They were a married couple of the first century AD. The New Testament describes both as Christian missionaries. Missionary work means travelling to win new followers for a faith.

Paul called the pair his “fellow workers in Christ Jesus”. Paul lived and worked alongside them, since they practised the same craft. All three were tentmakers by trade. A tentmaker is a craftsman who makes tents. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, this shared trade links Paul’s daily work with his mission.

Emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome in the year 49, and the couple were among them. An emperor was the supreme ruler of the Roman world. Aquila himself was a Jew born in Pontus. He had come from Italy not long before Paul met him, together with his wife.

Across the New Testament, Priscilla and Aquila are always named together as a couple. Neither of them ever appears alone in the text. The New Testament forms the second part of the Christian Bible. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the pair thus always travel as a couple in the record.

• Teachers: They took the preacher Apollos aside and taught him the way of God more exactly.
• Courage: Paul wrote that both of them “risked their necks” to save his life.
• Names: Priscilla is a Roman pet form of Prisca, which was her formal name.

The Greek Orthodox Church commemorates Priscilla and Aquila together on February 13. The Antiochian Orthodox Church keeps the same date. To commemorate means to honour the memory of a person. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, this date marks the couple in the Greek church year.

Which ideas from the First Epistle to the Corinthians belong to a Footsteps of Paul tour?

Footsteps of Paul tours around Corinth call up the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Paul wrote it to address problems in the Christian congregation there. A congregation is a group of people who gather for worship. Divisions within the church were one such problem.

Scholars do not dispute that Paul himself wrote this letter. In the opening greeting, he names Sosthenes as co-sender. The letter itself, though, speaks throughout in the first person singular. First person singular means writing as one speaker, not as a group. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the letter thus carries Paul’s own voice.

Scholars favour the city of Ephesus as the place of writing, during Paul’s extended stay there. He learned of quarrels in Corinth from “Chloe’s people”. The phrase refers to the household of a woman named Chloe. A household covers the family members and servants who live in one home.

Paul describes himself as a “skilled master builder”. In that picture, he sets down the foundation, and others build on top. A master builder is the chief craftsman in charge of a building site. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the image presents Paul as the founder whom others follow.

• Love: Chapter 13 uses the Greek word agape throughout, rendered as love or charity in English.
• Famous phrase: The wording “through a glass, darkly” first appeared in the 1560 Geneva Bible.
• Greek quotation: One verse quotes “evil company corrupts good habits”, a saying from classical Greek literature.

Modern scholarship, following the early scholar Jerome, links that saying to Menander’s comedy Thais. Menander wrote comedies, light plays meant to amuse an audience. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, the line thus places Greek theatre inside a Christian letter.

What links Dionysius the Areopagite to a Footsteps of Paul tour?

Footsteps of Paul tours in Athens recall Dionysius the Areopagite. In the first century, he sat as a judge on the Areopagus Court of Athens. The Areopagus was an ancient court that met on a rocky hill in Athens.

For a Footsteps of Paul tour, Acts names a woman, Damaris, among those who believed with him. He is the patron saint of Athens, the city where he served. A patron saint is a saint believed to protect a place or group. Judges and the courts also count him as their protector.

His memory is celebrated each year on October 3. The Corpus Dionysiacum is a set of four writings on philosophy and theology. Corpus is a Latin word for a body of texts. Theology is the study of God and religious belief. By the early sixth century, Christians across the East credited these writings to Dionysius.

In 1895, Hugo Koch and Joseph Stiglmayr showed that the writings drew on Proclus. Proclus was a Neoplatonist thinker of the fifth century. Neoplatonism was a late school of thought built on the ideas of Plato. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, their work dates the writings to the fifth or sixth century.

• First record: The earliest documented use of the writings came at a meeting in 532 AD.
• Mistaken identity: A ninth-century text by Hilduin wrongly equated him with Dionysius, a bishop of Paris.
• Churches: Athens has two large churches named after him, on Skoufa Street and Panepistimiou Street.

A footpath for walkers around the Acropolis carries his name as well. The path crosses the rock of the Areios Pagos. Areios Pagos is the modern Greek name for the Areopagus. For a Footsteps of Paul tour, his name thus marks a path through Athens.

What do travellers ask about Footsteps of Paul tour, and what are the answers?

Footsteps of Paul tour stories count Apollos among Paul’s colleagues. He helped the early churches of Ephesus and Corinth grow. Eastern Orthodox tradition numbers Erastus among the Seventy Disciples. That group was a wider circle of early followers.

Before a Footsteps of Paul tour, who was Timothy?

Timothy’s Greek name means “honouring God” or “honoured by God”. His mother was Jewish and had become a Christian, while his father was Greek. In AD 52, Paul and Silas took him on their journey to Macedonia. Macedonia here means the region of northern Greece around Thessalonica.

For a Footsteps of Paul tour, what did Apollos do in Corinth?

Apollos came from Alexandria, a port city in Egypt, and was a devout Jew. Before Paul reached Ephesus, Apollos had left that city for Achaia and lived in Corinth. Corinth was then the provincial capital of Achaia. Paul summed up their work this way: he planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the growth.

On a Footsteps of Paul tour, why is Phoebe remembered?

Phoebe served the church in Cenchreae as a deacon, Paul writes. A deacon is a church helper, and the Greek word means servant. Paul trusted her to carry his letter to the Christians of Rome. He wrote that letter in Corinth, sometime between the years 56 and 58.

How does Erastus tie Corinth to a Footsteps of Paul tour?

Chapter 16 of Romans calls Erastus the steward, or treasurer, of Corinth. Parts of an inscription naming an Erastus were found near the theatre of Corinth. The text says he paved the area at his own cost, in return for his aedileship. An aedile was a Roman town official in charge of public works.