Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on Acts 11:19

Ac 11:19-24. The Gospel Being Preached to Gentiles at Antioch Also Barnabas Is Sent Thither from Jerusalem, Who Hails Their Accession and Labors among Them.

19. they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen--and who "went everywhere preaching the word" (Ac 8:4).

travelled as far as Phenice--that part of the Mediterranean coast which, commencing a little north of Cæsarea, stretches northwards for upwards of one hundred miles, halfway to Antioch.

and Cyprus--(See on Ac 4:36). An active commercial intercourse subsisted between Phenice and Cyprus.

and Antioch--near the head of the northeast coast of the Mediterranean, on the river Orontes, and containing a large colony of Jews, to whose religion there were there numerous proselytes. "It was almost an Oriental Rome, in which all the forms of the civilized life of the empire found some representative; and through the two first centuries of the Christian era it was what Constantinople became afterwards, 'the Gate of the East'" [Howson].