CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 32
“And So We Came to Rome”
1. Embarkation for Italy
Since paul was a prisoner, he had to be sent to rome under guard. When a suitable opportunity came along, he was put in charge (together with some other prisoners) of “a centurion of the Augustan Cohort,1 named Julius” (Acts 27:1). The centurion had a number of soldiers under his command to assist him in the discharge of his duties.
Theodor Mommsen, followed by W. M. Ramsay, inferred from these words that Julius was a member of the corps of frumentarii—a corps of centurions who served as liaison officers between Rome and the armies in the imperial provinces, and who might well undertake as an additional duty the escorting of prisoners from the provinces to Rome.2 There is, however, no evidence that the frumentarii acted as liaison officers or imperial police before the principate of Hadrian (A.D. 117–138);3 their original duty, as their name implies, was the organization of the transport of grain (frumentum) to Rome.
The transport of grain from Egypt, the chief granary of Rome, was of the highest importance: the shipping fleet devoted to it was organized for the service of the Roman state “as early as the Ptolemaic period.”4 It was indeed in a vessel belonging to this service that the greatest part of Paul’s voyage to Rome was completed. The ship in which Paul and the others embarked at Caesarea was bound in the opposite direction to that by which he and his companions had come to Palestine two years before; it was making in the first instance for the south-west coast of Asia Minor, but had to sail east and north of Cyprus, under the lee of the island, the prevailing wind being west or north-west. The ship put in at Myra, a port some miles east of Patara; it was then to sail north along the west coast of Asia Minor until it reached Adramyttium, on the mainland opposite Lesbos, which was its home port. At Myra, however, the centurion transferred his charges to a vessel of the Alexandrian grain-fleet, bound for Italy, with a considerable number of passengers on board.5 With a steady wind from the west, the best route from Alexandria to Italy was by Myra, which was in fact one of the chief ports serving the grain-fleet. The sequel shows that the centurion exercised considerable authority on board this vessel; he may well have been a frumentarius in the earlier sense of the term.
Rome: Catacombs of St. Sebastian: graffiti invoking Peter and Paul (see p. 452)
Rome: St. Paul-Without-the-Walls: façade and porch, showing statue of Paul (see p. 451)
The description of the voyage to Italy is a masterpiece of vivid narrative. Martin Dibelius, drawing special attention to the literary and stylistic features of the narrative, pointed to the defects in “the older school of criticism, which thinks only of the event and not of the account”.6 Equally defective would be an approach which thought only of the account and not of the event. True, the classical student will readily discern in this narrative a well-established literary form which can be traced back to Homer’s Odyssey, and the Old Testament student will trace some affinities with Jonah’s Mediterranean voyage.7 But attention must also be paid to the detailed contents of the narrative, which has been described (and justly so) as “one of the most instructive documents for the knowledge of ancient seamanship”.8
Paul was accompanied on the voyage by his friends Luke and Aristarchus. Luke’s personal participation has given us an account of the voyage in the first person plural. Perhaps he signed on as ship’s doctor. Aristarchus may have been entered on the passenger list as Paul’s servant, or he may even have shared his status as a prisoner under guard: we do not know.
Paul’s genius for friendship manifested itself at an early stage in the voyage. He so won the confidence of the centurion that by the time the ship on which they had embarked at Caesarea put in at Sidon he was allowed to go ashore on parole and visit his friends. Not only is Luke’s account of the voyage instructive in the matter of ancient seamanship; it is valuable also for its depicting of Paul’s personality in those trying circumstances which are apt to bring out a man’s real quality.
2. Storm at sea
From Myra the going was slow and difficult, because of the strong north-west wind that was blowing. The ship did not put into port at Cnidus (on the Carian promontory of Triopium), which they reached several days after setting out from Myra, but ran for the eastern extremity of Crete (Cape Salmone) and sailed under the lee of that island (along its south coast). The first convenient shelter after rounding Cape Salmone was Fair Havens (Kaloi Limenes), where they put in and waited for the wind to change. Two leagues farther west lies Cape Matala, beyond which the south coast of Crete trends suddenly to the north and would provide no more protection against a north-west wind.9
While they waited, they held a ship’s council, in which Paul—perhaps because he was an experienced traveller—was invited to participate. The safe season for Mediterranean navigation was now at an end: Luke mentions that “the fast”—that is, the Jewish day of atonement—“had already gone by” (Acts 27:9). In A.D. 59 the Day of Atonement fell on October 5, and the dangerous season for sailing had set in three weeks before.10 It was plain therefore that they could not complete the voyage to Italy before winter; the question was therefore debated where they should stay until winter was past. Paul strongly urged them to stay where they were in Fair Havens; there was a neighbouring town, Lasea,11 where accommodation might be available for the ship’s company. He foresaw danger and disaster if they sailed farther.
The pilot and shipowner, however, thought that they should make for the more commodious and better protected harbour of Phoenix (modern Phineka),12 some 36 miles (60 kilometres) west of Cape Matala. The centurion took their advice, and his vote seems to have been the decisive one. Soon after this decision was taken, the wind changed, and it appeared as if they might gain the winter quarters they had in mind. But they had scarcely rounded Cape Matala when the wind changed again: a typhonic north-easter, known to sailors as Euraquilo, rushed down upon them from Mount Ida and drove them out to sea.13 They soon ran under the lee of the small island of Cauda (Gavdos), some 23 miles to the south-west, and made speedy and timely use of the brief spell of shelter thus afforded—hauling the dinghy on board (it was normally towed astern), undergirding the ship and letting down the drift-anchor.14 There was great danger that, if Euraquilo continued blowing with gale force, it would drive them into the Greater Syrtis, the quicksands west of Cyrene. But with the drift-anchor dragging astern and the storm-sail set on the foremast, it was possible for the ship to be laid-to on the starboard tack (with her right side to the wind) and drift slowly, at a rate of about one and a half knots, in a general direction of eight degrees north of west. All the movable baggage and spare gear were thrown overboard, followed after a day or two by the mainyard. At a later stage the wheat cargo itself had to be jettisoned.
The storm raged for many days on end, blotting out the sky, so that they had neither sun by day nor stars by night to guide them. It was thus impossible to fix an accurate course, or even to reckon the passage of time with any precision. The ship was no doubt leaking badly, and they “could not tell which way to make for the nearest land, in order to run their ship ashore, the only resource for a sinking ship; but unless they did make the land, they must founder at sea.”15 Hunger and thirst were fast reducing their stamina; they had but little appetite in this desperate plight, quite apart from the difficulty of preparing food and the possibility that what food they had was spoiled or lost. Sooner rather than later, it seemed, the ship was bound to go down with all on board.
There is no implication in Luke’s narrative that Paul did not share the general pessimism of the rest on board who abandoned all hope of survival. He had faced death before and was inwardly prepared for it: his ambition, as he put it on another occasion, was “that with full courage now as always Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). This was more important even than bearing witness in Rome, which indeed he had been divinely assured early in his Jerusalem imprisonment he would yet do. It was he who had uttered the warning at Fair Havens that the result of proceeding with the voyage would be “much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives” (Acts 27:10). That was the voice of practical common sense, not of special revelation. But after ten or twelve days of drifting he experienced a night-vision in which it was revealed to him not only that he himself would survive to bear his witness before Caesar but that for his sake the lives of all his shipmates would be spared. (It is doubtful if Luke intended a contrast with Jonah, whose presence on board endangered the lives of all his shipmates.)
The fresh confidence with which he himself was thus inspired he endeavoured to impart to the others. This ship would be lost, he told them, but they themselves would be saved, “though we have to be cast ashore on some island”16 (Acts 27:26). Sure enough, during the fourteenth night after they left Fair Havens the sound of breakers off a rocky coast gave warning of approaching land, and successive soundings confirmed this. The sailors therefore dropped four anchors from the stern to serve as a brake until daylight showed them where they were. In the morning they slipped anchor and ran the ship into a creek with a sandy beach. What they could not know was that in the creek the ship “would strike a bottom of mud graduating into tenacious clay, into which the fore part would fix itself and be held fast, whilst the stern was exposed to the force of the waves”.17 After the strains and stresses to which the hull had been exposed it could not survive this fresh battering for long, and soon began to break up. The centurion issued a sauve qui peut order, and all reached land in safety.
3. Winter in Malta
Only when they landed did they find out where they were—on Malta. The name of the island was originally given by Phoenician sailors, in whose language melila meant “refuge”, and as that word occurs in Hebrew with the same meaning, Paul at any rate would recognize how apt the name was.18
As Luke has given a vivid portrayal of Paul’s helpfulness on board the storm-tossed ship—keeping his head when all about him were losing theirs, sharing with his shipmates his divinely-imparted assurance that no life would be lost, urging them to eat something in view of the exertions which they would have to make in getting ashore from the wreck—so after the landing he pictures him as a practical man, co-operating with others in necessary work. The hospitable islanders light a fire to enable the ship’s company to warm and dry themselves; Paul knows (unlike many theologians) that a fire will not continue to burn unless it is fed with fuel, and he joins in gathering sticks to keep it going. When one of the “sticks” turns out to be a snake, torpid through cold, which turns and fastens on his wrist when the heat thaws it,19 the Maltese conclude that he has committed some crime against heaven, and that Nemesis, having failed to drown him, has caught up with him by means of the snake.20 When Paul shakes off the snake and has plainly taken no harm, they change their minds and conclude that he is a god in disguise.
Paul was neither a god nor a superman, but his presence was a blessing to many of the islanders during the winter. He was still a prisoner, of course, but there was little danger that he or the other prisoners would escape from Malta before the next navigation season set in. He cured the father of Publius, the “first man” of Malta,21 who was suffering from fever and dysentery, and many other Maltese who had ailments of various kinds came to him and Luke for treatment, so that, by the time they were ready to sail to Italy, they were loaded with gifts from their grateful patients.22
4. Rome at last!
The voyage to Italy was completed at the beginning of spring in another ship of the Alexandrian state service, which had wintered in Malta. It put in at Syracuse and Rhegium and then set its passengers ashore at Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli), in the Bay of Naples. There was a Christian group there, with whom Paul was allowed to stay for seven days—presumably because Julius had business which detained him in the area for that length of time. Puteoli was the chief port of arrival in Italy of merchant shipping from the eastern Mediterranean. If Julius was a frumentarius in the original sense, he could well have had to deal with the landing and storage of the ship’s cargo. (In addition to the Christian group in Puteoli, there had been a Jewish community there for the best part of a century.)23
The remainder of the journey to Rome was completed by road; from Capua northward they travelled along the Via Appia. But news of Paul’s arrival in Italy had reached Rome already—no doubt the Christians in Puteoli had sent the message—and he and his friends were still thirty or forty miles distant from the capital24 when they were met by Roman Christians who had walked out to greet them and escort them for the remainder of their journey. Their presence and welcome brought great encouragement to Paul. “And so”, says Luke, “we came to Rome” (Acts 28:15).
In Rome, according to the Western text of Acts 28:16, the prisoners (including Paul) were handed over to an official called the stratopedarchos, the “camp-commandant”. One witness to the Old Latin version of Acts25 (which is based on the Western text) translates this title by princeps peregrinorum. The existence of an official so designated is attested by an African inscription of Trajan’s time;26 he was evidently commandant of the castra peregrinorum on the Caelian hill27—the headquarters of legionary officers on furlough in Rome (and also, from the second century, of frumentarii in their later rôle as liaison officers). But the rendering princeps peregrinorum may be no more than an intelligent guess; the stratopedarchos could have been the commandant of some other camp—the castra praetoria, for example, the headquarters of the praetorian guard near the Viminal Gate, at the north-east corner of the city. The praetorian camp-commandant (princeps castrorum) would have been a much less exalted person than the prefect of the praetorian guard (praefectus praetorio), who was a very powerful officer of state.28 In any case, the longer Western reading of Acts 28:16, which mentions the stratopedarchos, cannot certainly be accepted as part of the original text, but all forms of the text agree that Paul “was permitted to stay by himself with the soldier who guarded him”. According to the last sentence in Luke’s record, he stayed thus for two full years “at his own expense” or “in his own hired dwelling” (the Greek phrase may be translated either way). That is to say, he remained under house-arrest, guarded by a soldier, instead of being detained in the praetorian headquarters or any other “camp”.29 He was thus able to receive visitors from near and far and discharge his apostolic ministry, even in this restricted situation, without let or hindrance.
Among the visitors whom he received at an early stage of his detention Luke mentions a deputation of leading Roman Jews. Their debate with Paul forms the final word-picture of Luke’s narrative, plainly with programmatic intent. They manifested prudent reserve in disclaiming any previous knowledge of Paul: they had received no communication from Judaea to his discredit, they assured him. They manifested the same prudent reserve in disclaiming any first-hand acquaintance with Christianity: “we desire to hear from you what your views are”, they said; “for with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:22). The debate completes the pattern of Jewish refusal of the gospel coupled with Gentile acceptance of it, which has recurred earlier in Acts. Paul speaks the definitive last word, after quoting the text from Isaiah 6:10 about dull minds, deaf ears and closed eyes (a widespread early Christian testimonium of Jewish unbelief):30 “Take knowledge, then, that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen to it” (Acts 28:28).
5. Unanswered questions
Luke’s perspective on Paul’s apostleship and Gentile mission is different from Paul’s own. But the depth of our ignorance about the sequel to Paul’s arrival in Rome when Luke takes his leave of us is ample testimony to the value of his record for the period that it covers. What, for example, were Paul’s relations with the Christians of Rome during his two years’ house-arrest? Since they began so happily on the Appian Way, how did they continue? And what happened at the end of this period?
Some assure us quite confidently that it ended with Paul’s trial, conviction and execution; others, that it ended with his release—either through acquittal after trial, or because the case went against his accusers by default.
That Paul was executed at the end of the two years was contended over sixty years ago by J. Vernon Bartlet.31 He argued that the prosecutors gave notice within the statutory time-limit (which he supposed, in the light of later usage, was eighteen months) of their intention to proceed with the case; that they arrived in Rome early in A.D. 62 and successfully prosecuted Paul; that he was condemned to death as a disturber of the peace of the provinces; that the earliest readers of Acts would know from Nero’s record, without having to be told explicitly, what the outcome of the prosecution would be (the more so in view of the Jewish sympathies of Poppaea Sabina, whose influence over Nero was then approaching its peak); and that in fact there are ominous overtones in Agrippa’s remark to Festus: “He might have been released if he had not appealed to Caesar” (Acts 26:32).
If Paul was executed in A.D. 62, then his martyrdom was not, as is commonly supposed, an incident in the imperial attack on the Christians of Rome which followed the great fire of the year 64. This, of course, is no argument against dating his execution in 62, if the evidence points in that direction. But if Paul’s two years’ detention was followed immediately by his conviction and execution, Luke’s failure to mention it is very strange.
Alternatively we have the view variously propounded by W. M. Ramsay, Kirsopp Lake, and H. J. Cadbury, that the case never came to trial because the prosecutors failed to appear within the statutory period.32 This suggestion has some antecedent plausibility. If the Sanhedrin had failed to persuade Felix and Festus of the soundness of their case against Paul, in spite of all the local pressure that could be brought to bear on the procurator of Judaea, they would be even less likely to succeed in Rome. Roman law was apt to be severe on frivolous prosecutors. On the other hand, no prosecution would be so frivolous as one in which the prosecutors failed to appear; and Roman law insisted that they must appear.
The statutory period of eighteen months, which was assumed by Bartlet on his side (provisionally) and by Ramsay and Cadbury on theirs, turns out on examination to be based on the wrong dating of a papyrus which records an imperial edict fixing a time-limit of eighteen months for criminal cases submitted to the emperor from the provinces, whether by way of appeal or by reference as to a court of first instance. This document was first published towards the end of last century; Ramsay’s attention was drawn to it by J. S. Reid. But, as Mommsen recognized, the edict belongs to the third century,33 and the “appeal” which it has in view is the later procedure of appellatio against a sentence already passed, not the first-century procedure of prouocatio, which prevented the court of first instance from trying the case at all.34 In fact, there does not appear to be first-century evidence for any procedure permitting a case to lapse automatically by default. What evidence there is suggests that everything was done to compel the appearance of prosecutors and defendants and to prevent the abandonment of charges. A prosecutor who did not appear in court within a reasonable time would probably be penalized, but that would not imply the automatic discharge of the defendant.
The prolongation of Paul’s stay in Rome over two full years could have been due to congestion of court business as much as anything else; and if indeed he was discharged without his coming to trial, this (as A. N. Sherwin-White points out) would probably have been the result of an act of imperium on Caesar’s part. “Perhaps Paul benefited from the clemency of Nero, and secured a merely casual release. But there is no necessity to construe Acts to mean that he was released at all.”35 From the account of Paul’s night vision at sea, in which he was assured that he would stand before Caesar,36 Luke probably intends his readers to infer that Paul’s appeal did at length come up for hearing, whatever the outcome was.
Since the evidence of Acts fails us here, we must look elsewhere in our quest for further data relating to Paul’s Roman captivity and its aftermath.