Paul in Rome

“Jesus! avenger of our fall,
Thou faithful lover above all
The cross has ever borne!
0 tell me — life is in Thy voice — How much afflictions were Thy choice,
And sloth and ease Thy scorn?

Thy choice and mine shall be the same,
Inspirer of that holy flame,

Which must for ever blaze!
To take the cross and follow Thee,
Where love and duty lead, shall be

My portion and my praise.”

COWPER.

“The Apostle prisoner; but, though a prisoner, an Apostle... A spiritual Atlas — Paul carries the whole heathen world upon bis shoulders. That Roman empire, the most powerful on the face of the earth, which required seven ages to be established, this man takes only a quarter of an age to regenerate.” — Monod.

hat a change of scene now waited the Apostle!

All at once, from the dreary experiences of his sea- voyage, he found himself travelling, under the escort of soldiers, along one of the great public highways leading to the capital.

We have no means of knowing what particular road was selected. There was one that led in a northern direction by Capua; but it is more probable they adopted the route along the coast, as the most direct, by Vulturnum and Sinuessa to Minturnse. In either case, however, the little band would be treading the famous Appian Way, which still remains, like other monuments of antiquity. It is from 13 to 14 feet broad, having a hewn foundation, with regularly-formed stones above, smooth and square, fitting in to one another, and many of which, after 2000 years, are com-

■j6S the FOOTSTEPS OF ST PAUL.

paratively little worn,* As in our modern turnpikes, milestones were set up on this great highway every twenty miles, where were erected also inns or taverns for the baiting of horses and mules, and the accommodation of travellers. t Many objects of interest must have passed before the Apostle’s eye. The vine-clad plains of fertile Campania; the villas and terraces of beautiful Formise, where the illustrious Cicero had his favourite retreat; the walls, now seen scattered over the fields, and half covered with vines, olives, and hedges, must then have been entire, and full of the memory of the great orator. The road continued thence through the narrow passes of the Ccecuban hills, touching once more the sea, where the splendid villas and palaces of the ancient Auxur crowned the cliffs which towered above. Paul must have observed, conspicuous above the rest of the buildings, the Temple of Jupiter, standing on the summit of the rock, and looking over the vast country, on every side of which he was regarded as the protector and guardian. Crossing the mountains immediately above Auxur, the travellers would find themselves again in an extensive level, stretching miles on miles in the far distance, with patches here and there of luxuriant pasture, grazed on by numerous herds of cattle and horses. Here were the celebated Pomptine marshes, through which, in the time of the Apostle, a canal (still remaining, and called Cavata) had been formed by Augustus, mainly with the view of draining the morass. At its commencement, a few paces from the road, there was a fountain in the midst of a grove, with a temple, sacred to Feronia, the goddess of freedom. One soli-

* Eustace’s Classical Tour. i See Lewin.

tary ilex, hanging over the fountain, is all the modern traveller can discover of the old thicket. The temple has sunk into the dust, and not even a stone remains. Slaves who were about to obtain their freedom were brought to this shrine; they were seated within on a sacred chair, and on rising were declared free. Such was the form of religious rite in obtaining earthly freedom. Some may have been at the moment kneeling or coming forth rejoicing in the assurance that they were slaves no more, when the Apostle of a nobler spiritual freedom was passing by. That chained prisoner could have told them of a nobler and purer fountain, washing in which they could be made “free indeed,” rejoicing in “the glorious liberty of the sons of God.”

We are not informed whether Julius and his band continued their journey on the paved road, or in trackboats dragged by mules. It is probable they would use the latter, which were most commonly employed; and if so, the time of travelling would be the same as that spoken of by other wayfarers. Horace, in his Satires, gives a vivid description of a night journey along the canal. He complains of the buzzing of gnats, the croaking of frogs, and the still more vexatious tardiness of the muleteer, who took sixteen hours to a distance of twenty-seven miles. Night was the time, as Strabo relates, when passengers were in the habit of commencing their journey, because the vapours, continually arising from the swamps, are less noxious then than during the heat of the day.* At the end of the canal, eighteen miles from Terracina, and fifty-one miles from Rome, was a place called Appii Forum, filled with low taverns, where the mules were unyoked after

Eustace’s Tour, p. 321. 2 A a long stage. It was called, probably, after the consul Appius Claudius, who had constructed this famous Aypian Way, and to whose memory a statue had been erected in the busy town which bore his name.* It was a well-known place of refreshment for travellers passing north or south, and enjoyed no very favourable reputation. It was the noted resort, in that age, of what we may call the “swell mob” of the Italian London. Thieves, pickpockets, and pedlars had always a promising trade amid its bustle and confusion, t

In the dense and busy crowd of idlers and traffickers there, we are led to wonder if Paul would meet one friend to cheer his drooping spirit 1 Strange to say, in that unlikeliest of places, Christian friends discover him, and amid the rude voices and jostling of the multitude, the disciples of a crucified Jesus embrace one another! The Christians from Rome had heard from their brethren at Puteoli of the Apostle’s arrival. They had come down to this meeting-place, fifty-one miles from the capital, to welcome him. They might probably have gone even further but not knowing whether he would travel by the road or the canal, they waited at the common terminus of both, Appii Forum.

Ten miles farther on, at a place called “The Three Taverns,” % a second band of Christian friends met him — perhaps the older and more infirm, who had tarried behind their more robust and younger brethren. The spirit of the Aged Apostle -revived. He had for long

* Calmet. t See Horace Sat., v. 3.

% In the time of Constantine we find that the Three Taverns had become the seat of a bishop. That emperor appointed nineteen bishops throughout his dominions, to settle the controversy between Donatus and Ctecilianus, and among these we find the name of Felix a Tribus Tabernis (Felix from “The Three Taverns”). — Hammond’s Annolatio/is.

been accustomed to nothing but a prison life; for two years frowns more than smiles had been familiar to him ] but prisoner though still he was, he had much of the aspect of a hero returning in triumph. Never did a nobler champion tread the Appian Way, nor one more truly entitled to the term of “Great.” There is a world of touching meaning in Luke’s short statement, “When Paul saw the brethren, he thanked God, and took courage.” His sensitive heart was deeply touched by the kindness of those who, in a strange land, thus welcomed him. He was doubtless cheered also by seeing the liberty they appeared to enjoy. Seventeen miles farther brought him to the base of the Alban hills. These separated the plains we have just spoken of from the Campagna of Rome. Here he would pass through the lovely valley of Aricia, and see probably the same dark background spoken of by modern travellers, “formed by the groves and evergreen forests that clothe the higher regions of the mountains.” * Gay equipages would be increasing on his view, and crowded villas and gardens studding the slopes of the Alban mount. After two other gentle elevations, he would get his first glimpse of the Great Capital of the world, with its two millions of human beings! Perhaps he saw it first at the hour the poet describes —

“Tis sunset on the Palatine. A flood
Of living glory wraps the Sabine hills,
And o’er the rough and serrate Apennines
Floats like a burning mantle.”

What his impressions were when its domes and columns rose before him, we cannot say. His feelings regarding it must, at least, have been very different

* Eustace.

from those recorded of the St Paul of the sixteenth century, whom we have more than once already compared with our Apostle. To the former, with all its glory and grandeur, as mistress of the nations, Rome was a heathen city in the saddest sense, full of dreadful vice, her boasted virtues only what an old writer calls “splendid «ins.” When the Saxon monk, on the other hand, first saw the city of the Tiber, the chains of superstition were still binding him. He was yet a devoted son of the Papal Church, his eyes closed to those enormous evils which he was yet to expose before Christendom. Rome, therefore, was still to him what Jerusalem was to the child of Abraham. It was the mother of all Churches — the Zion of the gospel age — the “city of God.” The historian of the German Reformer thus describes Luther’s first approach to it: — “After a painful journey in the beginning of summer, under the burning sun of Italy, he approached the seven-hilled city; his heart was stirred, his eyes sought the Queen of the World and of the Church. As soon as he caught sight in the distance of the eternal city — the city of St Peter and St Paul — the metropolis of Catholicity — he prostrated himself on the ground, exclaiming, ‘Holy Rome, I salute thee! ‘” Paul’s exclamation, if he had any, must have been very different. We may well suppose it would rather have been this, “Unhappy Rome! I pity thee! but, in the name of my divine Lord and Master, I come proclaiming to thee a freedom which all thy boasted glory knows nothing of!”

Soon they were in the vast suburbs, among villas, gardens, and tombs. The houses became denser, the streets narrower. At last they come to the Porta

Capena, the great arch through which often and again triumphant legions had marched. Continuing their waythrough the streets, they reached the Forum, the great centre of interest, where the golden milestone stood, at which the various roads, leading to different parts of Italy, met.* Gigantic buildings rose all around it — arches, colonnades, temples, and statues. Porticoes lined either side; under one stood, in bronze, the Latin and Roman kings, from iEneas down to Tarquinius Superbus; on the other were ranged the Roman heroes, all in triumphal robes. In the centre rose a colossal statue of Augustus, t How striking a contrast is the description of the same scene by a traveller eighteen hundred years later, who, in describing its “colonnades encumbering the pavements buried under their ruins “—” shattered porticoes, broken shafts, and vast fragments of marble capitals, and cornices heaped together,” concludes by saying, “A herdsman seated on a pedestal, while his oxen were drinking at the fountain, and a few passengers moving at a distance in different directions, were the only living beings that disturbed the silence and solitude which reigned around I” J The Capitoline hill terminated the other end of the Forum; and if we are correct in describing the Apostle’s route, it must have now risen straight before him. It had on its summit the parent temple of the imperial city. A hundred steps led up to the shrine of Jupiter Tonans. It is described as having been” adorned with all the refinements of art, and blazing with the plunder of the world. In the centre of the temple, with Juno on his left, and Minerva on his right side, the Thunderer

* See Eustace’s Tour, vol. ii. p. 83. f Eustace, vol. ii. p. 88.

X See our picture of the Forum as it now is, in ruins.

sat on a throne of gold, grasping the lightning in one hand, and in the other wielding the sceptre of the universe.” On the Apostle’s left rose the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine; where was preserved, in the midst of the gorgeous buildings, the lowly cottage of Romulus thatched with reeds. The dominion of the founder of Rome extended no further than the seven hills. But in the time of Paul, this Palatine hill alone was found too small for the imperial palace; and no wonder! when we read of its avenues, triple porticoes, and thousand columns, extending for a mile in length. A flight of steps led up from the Forum to the royal residence. Sentries paced in front of the gates, and the palisades were crowned with laurel, in token of victory. A temple of Apollo stood within the royal precincts, and spacious gardens stretched down towards the circus behind.

It is more than probable that the place to which Paul was conducted was the camp or barrack of the Pretorians, — a large square with buildings all round, erected during the reign of Tiberius, outside the city walls. The Pretorian troops were the picked favourites in the Roman army. There were ten thousand of them in all. They were in receipt of double pay, besides other privileges not possessed by the rest of the soldiers. We may imagine, then, the Great Apostle conducted outside the gate of the city, and entering through strong fortifications into these imperial barracks. He and his guard would cross a deep ditch, or vallum, which enclosed the camp, and then by a gateway they would reach the interior of the barracks. His eye would probably rest on a large field immediately in front for military exercise, and where, a few years before, the British king Caractacus had been led in triumph. Manyprisoners from distant parts of the empire were within these same walls. He might hear the clank of the chain by which they were fastened to the attendant soldier, giving him intimation of what might be waiting himself! God, however, had in his mercy ordered for his servant a kindlier treatment. Afranius Burrus was at this time the Pretorian Prefect.* He was a hardy, but noble-minded Roman, whom Tacitus describes as having his one hand maimed with honourable wounds. To him Paul was surrendered by Julius. The latter, it is evident, had mentioned favourably to the Roman Prefect the character and heroic spirit of his prisoner, and peculiarly commended him to his clemency. Burrus was convinced that he had been guilty of no crime worthy of bonds. But as it was needful for him to undergo the form of a trial, the Prefect could not with safety grant him his liberty. He so far relaxed, however, the severity of imprisonment by allowing him to live in his own hired lodging in the city, with the usual precaution of having a soldier by him, to whom he was chained. These soldiers probably relieved one another. Who can tell but that under the instructions of their prisoner, their hardened spirits may have learned to “fight the good fight of faith, and to lay hold of eternal life” 1 What sort of an apartment Paul occupied, of course we can form no conjecture. As silver and gold he had none, most probably the expense of it was defrayed by the “devout brethren” who had come to welcome him at Appii Forum. If so, they would probably secure a room of sufficient dimensions to form “a church in the house,” where they might

* Tacit. Ann. xii. 42. 1.

meet often, and listen to his heart-stirring words. Here he was left in custody, to be tried in due time before the emperor.

Nero was now sovereign of the Roman world. He was still but a youth of twenty-one, but his life of guilt and infamy had already begun. His beauty, among other things, had proved a snare to him. He delighted to deck himself out in finery, and his light glossy hair hung in ringlets, like a woman’s, over his shoulders. His whole education gives us a painful specimen of the follies of what was thought a brilliant age. His early guardians and instructors were his aunt Lepida, a dancing master, and a barber! and when, as a mere youth, he was exalted to the throne of the world, the frivolity of his early training showed itself in public exhibitions in the theatre, where the emperor played on the harp, sang, and recited verses of his own, amid thunders of applause. Upon one of these rehearsals, a solemn thanksgiving to the gods was decreed, and still further to flatter his vanity, it was resolved to dedicate a part of the verses in letters of gold to Jupiter Capitolinus; — a folly trifling in comparison with his own; on the day of the athletic games, he shaved his beard, put the hair into a box of pure gold, enchased with precious stones, and consecrated it to the same “Father of gods and men!” * Miserable as all this was, it would have been well for himself and the world if his puerilities had never gone further. There is scarce the crime, however, that can be named, into which this wicked emperor did not plunge. He had murdered many courtiers in cold blood; and when the Great Apostle arrived in Rome, Octavia, his beauti-

* Suetouius’s Life of Nero, pp. 347, 349.

ful and noble-minded queen, was living in cruel exile. The infamous Poppaea was residing with him as his unlawful wife, in his splendid Palatine Palace. Shortly after, he not only gave orders for Octavia’s murder, but had her head brought to Rome, savagely to witness it! A few weeks later, he committed the most enormous of his many fearful crimes, in the assassination of his own mother. His first purpose was to loosen the rafters of her bed-chamber, and to bury her as she was asleep under the ruins of the ceiling. This failing, he next arranged to drown her on her way to her villa on the Lucrine Lake, when on board an ornamental yacht, so contrived as, on a given signal, to fall to pieces. This also having failed, she was despatched the same night with daggers! “The freedman, Anicetus, undertook the mission; and on entering the chamber where Agrippina reclined with a single female slave, and solitary lamp, she said to him, ‘If you bring a message from my son, to inquire after my health, tell him I am better; if your purpose be murder, do it quickly; ’ then baring her bosom, with a design of shortening her sufferings, or reproaching the parricide, she exclaimed, ‘Strike here,’ and was despatched with repeated wounds.” *

It gives a mournful picture of his hardened levity, that a short time after, he was seen singing to the guitar, and acting in presence of crowds of Romans, the nobler of whom shed tears when they saw the imperial honour so tarnished. When the tidings of revolt among his subjects on one occasion came to his ears, he threatened to poison the whole senate, consume the city by fire, and let loose wild beasts among the people in the streets. No

* Lempriere’s Dictionary.

wonder Paul afterwards speaks of him as a “Lion,” and thanks his God who had rescued him from his jaws.*

Perhaps never in the history of our race did there live at one time two such opposite specimens of humanity as now in the city of Rome — Nero and Paul. The one, the nominal master of the world, but an awful mixture of the beast and the fiend; the other, a “persecuted tent-maker,” but possessing a nature with all that was lofty, pure, lovely, and of good report.

It was then under the reign of this “bold, bad man,” and while some of the scenes we have described were transacting in the palace, that our Great Apostle lived for two years in the capital. t

There were many Jews resident in Rome then as now. They were confined, however, as at this day, to a “Jewish Quarter.” This was situated on the other side of the Tiber. Here they were allowed to have their own synagogues, and to collect their annual tribute of two drachmae on each head, for the support of the temple treasuiy in Jerusalem. There were also, as we have seen, at present in the imperial city not a few Christians. Many of the latter, like Aquila and Priscilla, had been driven from Rome to cities bordering on the Mediterranean, in consequence of the edict of Claudius. While sojourning in these eastern countries, as I before observed, some of them had seen Paul personally. Their faith and devotedness had been deepened. They had returned to the great capital with their minds much impressed by the holy teaching they had received from his lips. The long list of names in the closing chapter of his Roman epistle* informs us how many devoted believers were in the city

* 2 Tim. iv. 17. t Lempriere. See also Mr Lewin, vol. ii. p. 744.

of the Tiber, waiting to welcome their spiritual father and friend.

As was the Apostle’s custom in other cities, lie preached in Rome to the “Jews first.” After occupying for three days his solitary room, he sent for the principal people among the Israelites to have a conversation with them. Probably he was anxious to explain his conduct, and get their feelings enlisted on his side before they were prejudiced against him by communications from their brethren at a distance. We perhaps could not have wondered if they had been unprepared to meet the Apostle in a kindly spirit. The very fact of his having come thither, appealing to the Roman Emperor against their own Sanhedrim, was, in itself, enough to rouse their suspicions and prejudices. When “the heads of the nation” — the leading Jewish citizens — therefore, arrived at his lodging, he endeavoured at first to remove from their minds any unjust and unfounded impressions. He showed that it was they, his own countrymen at Jerusalem, who had in the first instance done him the cruel injustice of handing over one of their own nation to the Roman power. Even the Roman Governor had been ready to let him go, but his Jewish enemies had refused. In these circumstances, he could do no otherwise than appeal unto Caesar. He concludes by telling them that his only crime had been preaching the great expectation given to his fathers of a coming Messiah. “For the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain.”

They assured him, in reply, that they had got no tidings regarding him from their countrymen in the East, nor had they ever heard any evil concerning him. His vessel, wrecked as it was, had evidently brought its crew more speedily to Rome than other ships which had embarked at the same time from Syria, and which had been kept back by stress of weather during that stormy winter.

Although, however, the Jewish brethren at Rome had no charge of a personal kind to bring against Paul, it was different about the cause he was pleading, as they added, that the sect to which he belonged, called “Christians,” was “everywhere spoken against.” * There was nothing in their reply to discourage the Apostle; if anything, he might conclude they were disposed to hear him in a more candid spirit than he could have expected. A day, therefore, was fixed for a meeting at his own lodging, where, to all willing to come, he would unfold the great doctrines for which he had been called in question.

A large body of Jews assembled at the time specified. From morning to evening the Apostle continued his argument, trying to convince them from their own Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. There was a division among the hearers; some (the honest portion, open to conviction) believed; but others, as is ever the case, continued in their bigotry and prejudice, and went away unbelieving as they came. Paul could not suffer them to depart without a word of awful warning — the doom pronounced against obstinate and wilful unbelievers by the Prophet Isaiah.” Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: for the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed j lest they should see with their eyes, and hear

* Acts xxviii. 22.

with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it.” *

As the Apostle now commenced unfolding that gospel to the Gentiles which his own countrymen in Rome rejected, the unbelieving Jews began among themselves an active opposition. He, however, remained for two years in his own hired house, proclaiming faithfully to all who would hear regarding the kingdom of his Lord. The kindness of Burrus, which he experienced when he first came, was still continued. He was spared the ignominy and discomfort of being shut up with other prisoners in the Pretorian barracks, but was allowed to remain in his own lodging, and to see there what friends he chose. It was necessary, however, that the Roman law should be enforced in his being: strictly guarded; day and night he was chained by the arm to a Roman soldier, but this was his consolation and joy, that “the Word of God was not bound.” The effects of his preaching appear first among the Pretorian guards; — probably the soldiers who had the charge of him, carried back day after day to the camp the tidings of the truth he proclaimed. Though his weapons were not like theirs, carnal, they proved to be “mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” When he writes to his old Philippian friends, he tells them, with a joyful heart, that his “bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places.” t

It is worthy of remark, in passing, that probably to Paul’s intercourse with Roman soldiers at this time,

* Acts xxviii. 26-28. f Pbil. i. 13.

we may trace the references in his letters written from Rome, to armour, and battle, and military life. Both the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Epistles to Timothy were composed during his Roman captivity. They are just what we might naturally expect from a man living daily chained by the wrist to a soldier of the Imperial Guard — listening to the clank of their heavy armour, and hearing the sound of their bugles in the Pretorian tent. He tells Timothy to “act the part of the good soldier of Jesus Christ;” and the Ephesians have every part of the Roman armour spiritualised: — the “breastplate” — the “helmet” — the “sandals” — the “shield” — the “sword” — that they might be able “to stand in the evil day.” *

But to return. The tidings of the gospel reached not merely the military camp, but the imperial palace. Though wicked Nero’s heart remained untouched, Paul sends Christian greetings from the “saints in Caesar’s household.” Even before the Apostle reached Rome, some noble women among the higher ranks had taken up the cross of Jesus, amid the frowns and ridicule of the “great and mighty.” The wife of the conqueror of Britain, Pomponia Graecina, was only one of several who had embraced “the truth as it is in Jesus;” and now that Paul had himself come among them, we need not wonder that the good seed should spread. Among other converts, the Roman martyrology mentions Torpes, an officer of note; and Chrysostom speaks of one of Nero’s cupbearers.t It is even said, although we have only tradition for it, that the aged philosopher Seneca, the tutor of Nero, in his old age, laid aside “philosophy falsely so called,” for the glorious simplicities of the

* Eph. vi. 11 to end. t Cave, p. 102.

faith of Jesus. Seneca was the intimate friend of Burrus; and it is by no means improbable that he would introduce him to one so like-minded, gifted, and learned as Paul of Tarsus.*

“The sacred historian tells us, that the door of Paul’s lodging was open to every comer, and he tells us no more; but curiosity would fain ask many an interesting question as to the personages then at Rome. What was Gallio about, who had known Paul at Corinth 1... Under the auspices of his brother Seneca, did he now investigate the truth? How did Felix demean himself? did he renew the intimacy he had begun at Cesarea? or had he not the hardihood to look in the face the man whom he knew to be innocent, and ought to have acquitted, but had left bound to serve his own selfish purposes? Where were Caractacus and his family — his wife, and daughter, and brothers, who had, a few years before, been prisoners in the Pretorium? Were they still detained at Rome as hostages? and if so, did a British king ever have an interview with one of the apostles? Questions such as these cannot be solved, and it is idle to pursue them.”t

At this period of Paul’s life, as detailed in the Acts of the Apostles, the curtain falls — the history of Luke comes abruptly to a close. It is from the Apostle’s after-epistles that we are able to get some knowledge of his future career, now that his ardent wish was at last fulfilled — “to preach the gospel at Rome also.”

* Sea Lewin, p. 760. f Ibid, vol. ii. p. 762.