Acts 16:6 Paul, Silas and Timothy travel through the Roman provinces of Galatia and Phrygia as the Holy Spirit prevents them from preaching in the Roman province of Asia (see 3 on Map 24).
Cave houses at Sille in the mountains of Galatia (Acts 16:6)
Acts 16:7 On the border of Mysia, they try to enter Bithynia, but the Holy Spirit (the “Spirit of Jesus”) (Acts 16:7) will not allow them.
Acts 16:8 So they travel through Mysia and come to the coast of the Aegean Sea at Troas.
Troas
Alexandria Troas was founded by Antigonus, one of Alexander the Great’s commanders, in 310BC (see Map 24). Troas became a Roman ‘colonia’ – a colony populated by veteran soldiers and their families – during the reign of the Emperor Augustus. It would have been a place of fascination and mystery to an educated Greek speaking man such as Paul, as it was close to the site of the fabled ancient city of Ilium (Troy).
Paul would have been familiar with Homer’s account of Helen – the beautiful wife of King Menelaus, abducted by the Trojans and later rescued by the Greeks who sailed across the Aegean Sea and built a wooden horse in order to gain entry to the city.
Roman remains at Alexandria Troas (Acts 16:8) (Horacio36)
Modern visitors to the village of Dalyan, near Eczine in Turkey, can still find underwater remnants of the Roman harbour and the remains of a colonnaded street leading inland to the old Roman city of Alexandria Troas (‘Alexandria of the Troad’). Other ruins, some two miles south east of the modern settlement, include the impressive Baths of Herodes, a theatre and the Temple of Dionysius, the Greek god of wine. At nearby Hisarlik are the excavated remains of Ancient Troy, the Ilium of King Priam featured in Homer’s Iliad.