CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4
“This Man is a Roman Citizen”
1. Citizen rights
In tarus, then, probably in the first decade of the christian era, Paul was born. The privilege of Tarsian birth and civic status was, however, outweighed by the fact that he was born a Roman citizen.
The same military tribune in Jerusalem to whom Paul introduced himself as a Jew of Tarsus was surprised to be informed later that Paul was also a Roman citizen. “Tell me”, he said to Paul, “are you a Roman citizen?” When Paul said “Yes”, the tribune answered, “I bought this citizenship for a large sum”.1 “But I”, said Paul, “was born a citizen” (Acts 22:27 f.).
If he was born a Roman citizen, his father must have been a Roman citizen before him. Roman citizenship was originally confined to freeborn natives of the city of Rome, but as Roman control of Italy and the Mediterranean lands extended, the citizenship was conferred on a number of other people who were not Roman by birth, including certain select provincials.2
But how did a Jewish family of Tarsus acquire this exceptional distinction? The members of this family, by all accounts, were not assimilationist Jews who compromised with Gentile ways: this much is implied by Paul’s claim to be “a Hebrew born of Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5). We just do not know how it obtained Roman citizenship. Cilicia fell within the sphere of command of more than one Roman general in the first century B.C.—Pompey and Antony, for example—and the grant of citizenship to approved individuals was included in the overall authority (imperium) conferred on those generals by law. Presumably Paul’s father, grandfather or even great-grandfather had rendered some outstanding service to the Roman cause. It has been suggested, for example, that a firm of tent-makers could have been very useful to a fighting proconsul.3 But no certain evidence is available. One thing is certain, however: among the citizens and other residents of Tarsus the few Roman citizens, whether Greeks or Jews by birth, would constitute a social élite.
As a Roman citizen, Paul had three names—forename (praenomen), family name (nomen gentile) and additional name (cognomen). Of these we know only his cognomen, Paullus. If we knew his nomen gentile, we might have some clue to the circumstances of the family’s acquisition of the citizenship, since new citizens commonly assumed their patrons’ family name—but we are given no hint of it. His cognomen Paullus may have been chosen because of its assonance with his Jewish name Saul (Heb. Shaʾul), which in the Greek New Testament is sometimes spelt Saoul but more frequently Saulos, the latter form rhyming with Greek Paulos.
If the circumstances in which Paul’s family acquired Roman citizenship are obscure, many other questions relating to his citizenship are hardly less so. On more than one occasion, for example—at Philippi and, some years later, at Jerusalem—he appealed to his rights as a Roman citizen. The former occasion was when he protested at having been summarily beaten with rods by the lictors who attended the chief magistrates of Philippi (a Roman colony), without being given a proper trial (Acts 16:37).4 On the latter occasion he invoked his rights in order to be spared a scourging (much more murderous than a beating with rods) to which the military tribune already referred to was about to have him subjected in an effort to discover why his presence and movements in the temple precincts had provoked a riotous outburst among the Jerusalem populace.5 Paul voiced his protest to the centurion in charge of the men detailed to carry out the scourging, and the centurion in alarm went to the military tribune: “What are you about to do?” he said. “This man is a Roman citizen” (Acts 22:26). Hence the interchange between, the tribune and Paul quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
Wherever he went throughout the Roman Empire, a Roman citizen was entitled to all the rights and privileges which Roman law provided, in addition to being liable to all the civic duties which Roman law imposed. A citizen’s rights and privileges were laid down in a long succession of enactments—most recently the Julian Law on the public use of force (lex Iulia de ui publica)6—going back traditionally to the Valerian Law (lex Valeria) passed at the inception of the Republic (509 B.C.). These rights and privileges included a fair public trial for a citizen accused of any crime, exemption from certain ignominious forms of punishment, and protection against summary execution. To none of these privileges could a non-citizen subject of Rome lay legal claim.
2. Citizen registration
But when a man claimed his citizen rights—when he said ciuis Romanus sum (“I am a Roman citizen”), or its equivalent in Greek—how did he prove his claim? In the absence of any provision for verification on the spot, it must have been tempting for a man in a tight corner to make the claim even when he had no title to it, and hope to get away with it. Certainly it was a capital offence to claim falsely to be a Roman citizen, but how was the official before whom the claim was made to know whether the claim was true or not?
A new citizen might have a duly witnessed copy of his certificate of citizenship; auxiliary soldiers received such a document when they were enfranchised, and civilians may have been given something of the same sort.7 But Paul was not a new citizen. He might, however, produce a diptych, a pair of folding tablets, containing a certified copy of his birth registration. Each legitimately born child of a Roman citizen had to be registered within (it appears) thirty days of his birth. If he lived in the provinces, his father, or some duly appointed agent, made a declaration (professio) before the provincial governor (praeses prouinciae) at the public record-office (tabularium publicum). In the course of his professio the father or his agent declared that the child was a Roman citizen; the professio was entered in the register of declarations (album professionum), and the father or agent would receive a copy, properly certified by witnesses. This certificate recorded the professio in the third person, in indirect speech, and it would include the words: ciuem Romanum esse professus est (“he [the father or agent] declared him [the child] to be a Roman citizen”). It may have been customary for a Roman citizen who was constantly on the move to carry this certificate around with him.8 If so, we can envisage Paul as producing it when he had to claim his citizen rights. But could another copy have been readily procured if the original one was lost? If Paul carried his around, the chances of his losing it were considerable—for instance, on the occasion when he spent a night and a day adrift at sea (2 Corinthians 11:25). On the other hand it may have been more usual to keep these certificates in the family archives; we cannot be sure.9 There is a further point to consider; this registration of Roman citizens at birth was apparently enacted by two fairly recent laws—the lex Aelia Sentia of A.D. 4 and the lex Papia Poppaea of A.D. 9. If Paul was born even a year or two before the earlier of these enactments, would he necessarily have been registered in this way? The fact that such questions can be asked but not answered emphasizes how limited our knowledge is.
Paul’s most momentous invoking of his privileges as a Roman citizen came at a late stage of his career, when he found himself on trial before the procurator of Judaea and “appealed to Caesar”—i.e. appealed to have his case transferred from the provincial court to the supreme tribunal in Rome (Acts 25:10 f.). The details and implications of this appeal will engage our attention in due course.10