"A citizen of no mean city" (Acts 21:39) sounds like Paul is saying Tarsus wasn't a cruel or unkind place.

In Acts 21:39, Paul defends himself before the Jerusalem crowd by identifying himself: "I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city." Tarsus was in fact a major free city with real standing in the Roman world, and Paul is using the double negative for emphasis: "no mean city" means "a city of real distinction," the opposite of unimportant.

Modern English kept "mean" as "unkind" or "cruel," a sense that developed later, so a reader who doesn't know the older meaning can end up flipping Paul's point entirely, imagining he's defending Tarsus's character rather than its status.