Accdrsed

In AV o-p Mnm is tr. ' accursed ' in Jos 6" T"""*, and 'a. thing' in Jos 6""'" T'""- 11. 1^ 1. 22», 1 Ch 2'. In aU these places RV gives 'devoted' or 'd. thing.' For the hirtm is not accursed from God so that we may make what secular use of it we please, but devoted to God, and not to be used by us at all. A. is also the tr. of hi6.e(ixa, anathtma, in Ro 9» 1 Co 12' Gal 1»- ». In these pas-sages RV simply transliterates the Greek. See Curse. J. Hastings.

ACHAIA ('Axofo), when Greece was free, was the strip of land bordering the Corinthian Gulf on the 5. ; but, by the Romans, the name Achaia was applied to the whole country of Greece, because the Achaean League had headed Greek resistance to Rome. Conquered and united with the province of Macedonia in B.C. 146,* Achaia was in n.c.

27 made a separate province ; and Thessaly, /Etolia, Acamania, and some part of Epirus, together witli Eubfca and the western, central, and southern Cyclades, were included in it. It was governed by an ollicial with the title Proconsul (Ac 18'^), who was appointed by the Senate from among tlio • This fact, hotlj- fUaputtKl for a time since 1&47, is now Kencr- ally admitted ; but A.

was treated more easily than some jtro- vincea ; Athens (and Del", , which see), Sicyon (which received part of the territory of Corinth), SpartA (which waa free from taxation and head of the Kleutherolakoaefl) receiving apccially favoui%^yle terms : see 1 Mac 15^. ex-prsetors ; and not less than live years must have elapsed between his prsetorsliip and his oroconsul- ship. Corinth wa.s the capital of the pri .-ince, and the proconsul's ordinary residence (Ac 18'^).

As the severity of taxation was a subject of complaint, Tiberius, in A.D. 15, reunited Achaia ^vith Mace- donia and Moesia under the administration of an imperial legatus ; but in 44, Claudius made it again a senatorial and proconsular province. Either at this or some later time, Thessaly was divided from Achaia and united with Macedonia, and Epirus with Acarnania was made a separate pro- curatorial province (as Ptolemy III., § 13. 44-46, and § 14, describes them). On 28th November, A.D.

67, Nero at the Isthmian games declared Greece free ; but within a few years Vespasian again made it a senatorial province ; and, so long as the empire lasted, it was governed by a proconsul, under wliom were a legatus and a qumstor. The proconsul and his legatiis were regularly annual officials, and so was the quajstor always, but an imperial legatus governed for a much longer term (two ruled from A.D. 15 to 44). In ordinary Gr.

usage, the term ' Hellas ' corresponded approxi- mately to the Rom. sense of Achaia ; and in that way 'EXXdt is mentioned in Ac 20^. But there was a wider sense of the epithet ' Greek,' according to which Macedonia could be thereby designated ; and thus Achaia and Macedonia together constitute the Gr. lands in Europe, and are sometimes coupled as a closely connected pair (Ac IQ** ; cf. Ro 15-', 2 Co 9^ 1 Th 18).

The existence of Jewish settlements and syn- agogues in Corinth and Athens, the two greatest cities of Achaia, is attested in Ac 17" 18^'; and is suggested elsewhere by the rapid foundation of new cliurches in Achaia (1 Co 2', Ac 18'-''). The presence of Jews is proved in Sparta and Sicyon as early as B.C. 139-138 through the letters addressed to tliose States by the Rom. Senate, 1 Mac 15'^ ; and in Ba'otia, ^tolia, Attica, Argos, and Corint li by a letter of Agripjia to Caligula, Philo, leg.

ad Gauim, § 36 (Mang. li. 587). Jewish inscriptions have been found at Athens, Patrse, and ALgiaa,. LrrKaATrRB. — There is a good article on Achaia in Pauly- Wisaowa, RB : see also Marquardt, Ham. Staatgverw. i. p. 821 f. ; Mommsen, Provinces of Ram. Emp. {Horn. Gcsch. v.) ch. vii. W. M. RAM.SAY.