At Neapolis they probably left their ship and went overland to their immediate goal, Philippi.

Originally known as Krenides, “place of small fountains,” the city was rebuilt by Philip of Macedon (359-336 B.C.), father of Alexander the Great, and named in his honor. Between Neapolis and Philippi there lay a range of mountains, in which were rich deposits of gold and silver.

 This phrase presents some difficulties. Philippi was not the chief city of any one of the four subdivisions of the Roman province of Macedonia (see on v. 9), the chief cities being Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Pella, and Pelagonia. However, there is no definite article in the Greek, hence it is possible that Luke meant simply to say that it was a chief town of the district and not the official capital. The adjective prōtos, “first,” here translated “chief,” was often found on coins of cities that were not capitals. It is also possible that he was using the word meris, translated “part,” or “district,” in the sense of “borderland,” and that it was the first city of that frontier district, either as the most important or as the first to which travelers would come from Thrace. This was precisely the position of Philippi, which had been garrisoned as a Roman outpost, because of the restless tribes in Thrace.

Philippi had become a Roman colony after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius by Octavian and Antony in 42 B.C. After the Battle of Actium, 31 B.C., this status was strengthened, and the city’s full title, as shown on coins that have been found, came to be Colonia Augusta Julia Philippensis. A Roman colonia bore little relation to our modern concept of a colony. It was a portion of conquered territory assigned to Roman citizens, who were often veteran soldiers. These were sent out under the authority of Rome, and marched to their destination like an army, to reproduce an equivalent to Roman civil and social life. These colonies were often on the frontiers as a protection, and as a check upon local provincial magistrates. The names of the colonists were retained on the lists of the tribes of Rome. They took with them their Latin language and their Roman coinage. Oftentimes their chief magistrates were appointed from the mother city, and were independent of the governors of the province where the colony was planted. In this way the colony was closely united with Rome. These colonies were sometimes described as the “bulwarks of an empire” (Cicero De Lege Agraria ii. 27. 73; Loeb ed., Speeches, vol. 3, p. 449) or “miniatures, as it were, and in a way copies” of the people of Rome (Aulus Gellius Attic Nights xvi. 13. 9; Loeb ed., vol. 3, p. 181). The spirit of a colony was therefore intensely Roman. Thus in this Macedonian city Paul, himself a Roman citizen, came directly in contact with a flourishing example of Roman imperial organization.

 See on ch. 9:19. Here the phrase seems to refer to less than one week, for it appears that the Sabbath in ch. 16:13 was their first in Philippi.