PERGE (Πέργα, Perga). — City of Pamphylia, whose ruins survive near Murtana, between the rivers Cestros (Ak Su) and Cataractos.
Inhabited by colonists who came from Argolis, P. first appears in literary texts of the 4th century B.C. It passed under the Seleucids in 218 B.C., and in 188 B.C. surrendered to Manlius Vulso, becoming part of the Kingdom of Pergamum. Verres plundered the temple of Artemis in 80–79 B.C. (Cicero, Verr., II, 1, 54 and 4, 71). Under the emperor Tacitus (A.D. 275–76), it became the capital of Pamphilia secunda.
P. was a very ancient Christian center of Asia Minor; St. Paolo stayed there twice on his first journey (Act. 13, 13; 14, 25), and it became the capital of the ecclesiastical province of Pamphylia. In 251, the holy martyrs Nestore and Tribinios, commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology on 25 February and by the Greeks on 27 and 28 February, were martyred there. Their acts survive in Greek and Latin (P. Franchi de' Cavalieri, in Note agiografiche, fasc. III [Studi e testi, 22], Rome 1901, pp. 115–17; BHL, 6068). From the signatures affixed to the councils, the known bishops of P. are: Epidauros in 314, Calliken or Callinicus in 325, Berinianos in 431, Epifanio in 449, Eulogio in 553, and Giovanni II in 869.