“Antonius Felix, per omnem saevitiam et libidinem, jus regium servili ingenio exercuit.”—TAC. Hist.v. 9.
“Jam pridem Judaeæ impositus … et cuncta malefacta sibi impune ratus.”—Ann.xii. 54.
A ROMAN judge to whom a prisoner had been sent with an elogium was bound, if possible, to try him within three days. Felix, however, had to send a message to Jerusalem, and fix a time for the case to come on, in order that the accusers might be present; and as the journey took nearly two days, it was the fifth day after St. Paul’s arrival at Cæsarea that he was brought to trial. The momentary diversion in his favour, of which by this time the Pharisees were probably ashamed, had settled into an unanimous hatred, and the elders, probably of both parties, hurried down to accuse their adversary. Ananias in person accompanied them, eager for revenge against the man who had compared him to a plastered sepulchre. It must have been intensely disagreeable to these dignified personages to be forced to hurry on a fatiguing journey of some seventy miles from the religious to the political capital of Judæa, in order to induce a Gentile dog to give up an apostate mesîth to their jurisdiction; but the Sanhedrists, smarting under defeat, would not be likely to leave any stone unturned which should bring the offender within reach of vengeance.
They wished to make sure of the extradition of their victim, and being little able to plead either in Greek or Latin, and more or less ignorant of the procedure in Roman courts, they gave their brief to a provincial barrister named Tertullus. Everything was done with due formality. They first lodged their complaint, and then the prisoner was confronted with them that he might hear, and if possible refute, their accusations. Tertullus was evidently a practised speaker, and St. Luke has faithfully preserved an outline of his voluble plausibility. Speaking with politic complaisance as though he were himself a Jew, he began by a fulsome compliment to Felix, which served as the usual captatio benevolentiae. Alluding to the early exertions of Felix against the banditti and the recent suppression of the Egyptian false Messiah, he began to assure his Excellency, with truly legal rotundity of verbiage, of the quite universal and uninterrupted gratitude of the Jews for the peace which he had secured to them, and for the many reforms1 which had been initiated by his prudential wisdom. The real fact was that Felix was most peculiarly detested, and that though he had certainly suppressed some brigands, yet he had from the earliest times of his administration distinctly encouraged more,2 and was even accused of having shared their spoils with Ventidius Cumanus when he had the separate charge of Samaria.3 He then apologised for intruding ever so briefly on his Excellency’s indulgent forbearance, but it was necessary to trouble him with three counts of indictment against the defendant—namely, that first, he was a public pest, who lived by exciting factions among all the Jews all over the world; secondly, that he was a ring–leader leader of the Nazarenes; and thirdly, that he had attempted to profane the Temple. They had accordingly seized him, and wanted to judge him in accordance with their own law; but Lysias had intervened with much violence and taken him from their hands, ordering his accusers to come before the Procurator. By reference to Lysias4 his Excellency might further ascertain the substantial truth of these charges. When the oration was over, since there were no regular witnesses, the Jews one after another “made a dead set” against Paul,5 asseverating the truth of all that Tertullus had stated.
Then the Procurator, already impatient with the conviction that this was, as Lysias had informed him, some Jewish squabble about Mosaic minutiæ, flung a haughty nod to the prisoner, in intimation that he might speak. St. Paul’s captatiobenevolentiaewas very different from that of Tertullus. It consisted simply in the perfectly true remark that he could defend himself all the more cheerfully before Felix from the knowledge that he had now been Procurator for an unusual time,6 and could therefore, from his familiarity with Jewish affairs, easily ascertain that it was but twelve days7 since the Pentecost, to which feast he had come, not only with no seditious purpose, but actually to worship in Jerusalem; and that during that time he had discoursed with no one, and had on no occasion attracted any crowd, or caused any disturbance, either in the Temple or in the Synagogues, or in any party of the city. He, therefore, met the first and third counts of the indictment with a positive contradiction, and challenged the Jews to produce any witnesses in confirmation of them. As to the second count, he was quite ready to admit that he belonged to what they called a sect; but it was no more an illegal sect than those to which they themselves belonged, since he worshipped the God whom, as a Jew, he had been always taught to worship—frankly, accepted their entire Scriptures—and believed, exactly as the majority of themselves did, in a resurrection of the just and unjust. In this faith it had always been his aim to have a conscience void of offence towards God and towards man. He had now been five years absent from Jerusalem, and on returning with alms for the poor of his people, and offerings to the Temple, they found him in the Temple, a quiet and legally purified worshipper. For the riot which had ensued he was not responsible. It had been stirred up by certain Asiatic Jews, who ought to have been present as witnesses, and whose absence was a proof of the weakness of the case against him. But if their attendance could not be secured, he called upon his accusers themselves to state the result of their trial of him before the Sanhedrin, and whether they had a single fact against him, unless it were his exclamation as he stood before them, that he was being tried about a question of the resurrection of the dead.
The case had evidently broken down. St. Paul’s statement of facts directly contradicted the only charge brought against him. The differences of doctrine between the Jews and himself were not in any way to the point, since they affected questions which had not been touched upon at all, and of which the Roman law could take no cognisance. It was no part of his duty to prove the doctrine of the Nazarenes, or justify himself for having embraced it, since at that time it had not been declared to be a religio illicita. Of this fact Felix was perfectly aware. He had a more accurate knowledge of “that way” than the Jews and their advocate supposed.8 He was not going, therefore, to hand Paul over to the Sanhedrin, which might be dangerous, and would certainly be unjust; but at the same time he did not wish to offend these important personages. He therefore postponed the trial—remampliavit—on the ground of the absence of Lysias, who was a material witness, promising, however, to give a final decision whenever he came down to Cæsarea. Paul was remanded to the guard–room, but Felix gave particular instructions to the centurion9 that his custody was not to be a severe one, and that his friends were to be permitted free access to his prison. St. Luke and Aristarchus certainly availed themselves of this permission, and doubtless the heavy hours were lightened by the visits of Philip the Evangelist, and other Christians of the little Cæsarean community to whom Paul was dear.10
On his return to Cæsarea with his wife Drusilla, and apparently in order to gratify her curiosity to see and hear a person whose strange history and marvellous powers were so widely known, Felix once more summoned Paul into his presence, and bade him discourse to them about his beliefs. Right nobly did Paul use his opportunity. Felix was a Gentile, and was moreover his judge, and it was no part of St. Paul’s duty to judge those that are without. Had he assumed such a function, his life must have become one incessant and useless protest. And yet, with perfect urbanity and respect for the powers that be, he spoke of the faith in Christ which he was bidden to explain, in a way that enabled him to touch on those virtues which were most needed by the guilty pair who listened to his words. The licentious princess must have blushed as he discoursed of continence; the rapacious and unjust governor as he spoke of righteousness—both of them as he reasoned of the judgment to come. Whatever may have been the thoughts of Drusilla, she locked them up in her own bosom; but Felix, less accustomed to such truths, was deeply agitated by them. As he glanced back over the stained and guilty past, he was afraid. He had been a slave, in the vilest of all positions, at the vilest of all epochs, in the vilest of all cities. He had crept with his brother Pallas into the position of a courtier at the most morally degraded of all courts. He had been an officer of those auxiliaries who were the worst of all troops. What secrets of lust and blood lay hidden in his earlier life we do not know; but ample and indisputable testimony, Jewish and Pagan, sacred and secular, reveals to us what he had been—how greedy, how savage, how treacherous, how unjust, how steeped with the blood of private murder and public massacre—during the eight years which he had now spent in the government, first of Samaria, then of Palestine. There were footsteps behind him; he began to feel as though “the earth were made of glass.” He could not bear the novel sensation of terror which crept over him, or the reproaches of the blushing, shamefaced spirit which began to mutiny even in such a breast as his. He cut short the interview. “Go,” he said, “for the present; I will take some future opportunity to summon you to a hearing.” Even his remorse was not purely disinterested. Paul had indeed acquired over him some of that ascendency which could hardly fail to be won by so lofty a personality; and Felix, struck by his bearing, his genius, his moral force, sent for him not unfrequently to converse with him respecting his beliefs. But this apparent interest in religious subjects was, in reality, akin to that vein of superstition which made him the ready dupe of Simon Magus, and it did not exclude a certain hankering after a bribe, which he felt sure that Paul, who had brought considerable sums of money to Jerusalem, could either procure or give. He took care to drop hints which should leave no doubt as to his intentions. But Paul was innocent, and neither would he adopt any illicit method to secure his liberty, nor in any case would he burden the affection of his converts to contribute the ransom which he was too poor to offer. He did not wish by dubious human methods to interfere with God’s plan respecting him, nor to set a questionable example to the future libellatici. He therefore declined to take the hints of Felix, and two years glided away, and he was still in prison.
Towards the end of that time he must have been startled by a terrible clamour in the streets of Cæsarea. Disputes, indeed, were constantly occurring in a city composed half of Jews and half of Greeks, or Syrians, between whom there was a perpetual feud for precedence. All the splendour of the place—its amphitheatre, its temples, its palace—was due to the passion for building which animated the first Herod. The Jewish population was large and wealthy, and since their king had done so much for the town, they claimed it as their own. It was quite true that, but for Herod, Cæsarea would never have been heard of in history. Its sole utility consisted in the harbour which he had constructed for it at enormous cost of money and labour, and which was extremely needed on that inhospitable coast. But the Greeks maintained that it was their town, seeing that it had been founded by Strato, and called Strato’s Tower until Herod had altered the name in his usual spirit of flattery towards the Imperial House. Towards the close of Paul’s imprisonment, the Greeks and Jews came to an open quarrel in the marketplace, and the Greeks were being worsted in the combat by their enraged adversaries, when Felix appeared with his cohorts and ordered the Jews to disperse. As his command was not instantly obeyed by the victorious party, Felix, who like all the Romans sided with the Gentile faction, let loose his soldiers upon them. The soldiers were probably not Romans, but provincials.11 They were therefore delighted to fall on the Jews, many of whom were instantly put to the sword. Not content with this, Felix, whose dislike to the whole race only deepened every year, allowed them to plunder the houses of the wealthier Jews.12 This crowning act of injustice could not pass unnoticed. Felix, indeed, as Tacitus tells us, had so long learnt to rely on the overwhelming influence of Pallas over Claudius, that he began to think that he might commit any crime he liked without being called to question. But Claudius had now been dismissed to his apotheosisby the poisoned mushrooms of Agrippina, and the influence both of Pallas and Agrippina were on the wane. The Jews laid a formal impeachment against Felix for his conduct at Cæsarea, and he was recalled to answer their complaints. Accompanied by Drusilla and Simon Magus, who had by this time assumed the position of his domestic sorcerer, he sailed to Italy, and his very last act was one of flagrant injustice. He had already abused the power of a provincial governor by delaying the trial of Paul for two years. It was a defect in Roman law that, though it ordered the immediate trial of a prisoner sent to a superior court with an elogium, it laid down no rule as to the necessary termination of his trial, and thus put into the hands of an unjust Prefect a formidable instrument of torture. Paul had now languished for two full years in the Herodian palace, and Felix had not decided his case. Philo mentions a similar instance in which Flaccus kept Lampo for two years in prison at Alexandria13 on a charge of laesa majestas, in hopes of breaking his heart by a punishment worse than death. Felix had no such object, for he seems to have felt for Paul a sincere respect; but since Paul would not offer a bribe, Felix would not set him free, and—more the slave of self–interest than he had ever been the slave of Antonia—he finally left him bound in order to gratify the malice of the Jews whom he thus strove, but quite vainly, to propitiate. He thought that he could, perhaps, settle some awkward items of their account against him by sacrificing to their religious hatreds a small scruple on the score of justice. Perhaps this was the last drop in the overflowing cup of his iniquity. How he closed his bad career we do not know. It required the utmost stretch of the waning influence of his brother Pallas to save him from the punishment which his crimes had deserved; and, although he was not put to death or banished, he had to disgorge the greater portion of his ill–gotten wealth. Drusilla had one son by her marriage with him, and this son, whose name was Agrippa, perished in the eruption of Vesuvius nineteen years after these events.14 Felix himself vanishes henceforth into obscurity and disgrace.