Revelation 2:8-11
Smyrna was a proud and beautiful city. Three to four hundred years after it had been destroyed by Alyattes, king of Lydia, it was rebuilt in 290 B.C. by Lysimachus and Antigonus as a model city. It boasted a famous stadium, library, and public theater (the largest in Asia). It claimed to be the birthplace of the great epic poet Homer. A famous thoroughfare called the Street of Gold curved around Mt. Pagus (which rose over 500 feet from the harbor) like a necklace on the statue of a goddess. At either end was a temple, one to a local variety of Cybele, known as Sipylene Mother (a patron divinity), and the other to Zeus. The acropolis on Mt. Pagus was called the crown or garland of Smyrna. In NT times the population may have been about 200,000. Coins describe the city as “First of Asia in beauty and size.”
Unlike many of the cities that developed without purpose and forethought, the city planners of Smyrna had obviously done their homework. There was a cohesiveness and a pattern about the architecture that made it blend together; and as one stood at the sea harbor looking up toward the top of Mount Pagus, he could see a panorama that led it to be called “a crown.”
Like many of the other cities, it too was a center of the emperor cult, erecting a temple to Tiberius in AD 26. It was also the first city to build a temple to Dea Roma (the goddess Rome). It also had famous temples to Zeus and Cybele connected by a majestic mall. Important for this letter, it also had a large Jewish population who was violently opposed to Christianity.
Some years later, the Jews joined the gentiles to form a mob and to call for the death of the bishop of the church, Polycarp. They actively assisted in his martyrdom by burning and prevented the Christians from getting possession of his body (Martyrdom of Polycarp).
In AD 155, Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, was burned alive for refusing to call Caesar “Lord”
After Polycarp refused to renounce his Christian faith and swear by the genius of Caesar, a mob consisting of both heathen and Jews “cried out with uncontrollable wrath and a loud shout, ‘This is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods, who teaches many neither to offer sacrifice nor to worship’ ”
Smyrna was actually a name for myrrh, the fragrant plant used in the anointing oil prescribed in the book of Exodus (Exod 30:22–33) and used in the process of embalming in Egypt and elsewhere. Its association with death (though not its only use) and suffering are well documented. Smyrna then was famous for two things: first, its beauty and, second, its suffering.