413 BETWEEN AMBITION QUIETISM AND your popular assemblies (ekklhs¥aiv) ; but if on the other hand ß ı you regard them as being in some measure citizens ... then surely it is not fitting to disfranchise them or to cut them off from association with you (34.21-22). Dio tries to convince the city that these hand-workers should not be considered “outsiders” (allotrioi), but should be “enrolled as Ω¥ citizens ” and regarded as members of their “body politic” (merov ¥ aytwn) 85. Dio implores the citizens to not rely on the “present Ω˜ system ” (34.24), but to acknowledge that the leaders — who were at odds with the general appointed by Rome — are “not competent” and that finally “citizens alone are not enough to solve the problem” (34.28). Dio concludes his appeal for political change with the exhortation to “behave mildly, considerately, with regard to your honour, and not in the spirit of hostility and hatred” (34.47). If Dietmar Kienast is correct about Dio’s intent — i.e., Dio Chrysostom promoted Trajan’s new policy on the administration of the Eastern provinces 86 — then the working classes were finally successful in their attempts to share the political arena of their city. Dio was witnessing a widespread change in the socio-political panorama of the Eastern provinces which had its momentum in the ferments and tensions of the first half of the first century CE (and probably even before). In this study, I suggest that even the Christian hand-worker association of Thessalonica was somehow influenced by this change. In this light, the injunction to “strive to keep quiet” (1 Thess 4,11), motivated by the necessity of walking “decently toward the outsiders ” (v. 12), seems to indicate that Paul was concerned about how the Christian community related to outsiders, among which were the Greek politarchs. Like Dio Chrysostom, Paul fashioned a Dio III, 34.23. 85 D. KIENAST, “Ein vernachlässigtes Zeugnis für die Reichspolitik 86 Trajans : Die zweite tarsische Rede des Dion von Prusa”, Historia 20 (1971) 62-80. Trajan (98-117) chose imperial administrators regardless of their origin (competence was the more regarded skill), giving a special consideration to the administration of the provinces (BENKO – O’ROURKE, The Catacombs, 73). Trajan’s new policy was effective on more than the macroscopic level, and was the obvious result of the new social awareness and political changes that preceded him.