The life and work of St. Paul

552 TSB LlffB AND WOBK O*1 ST.
to his apotlieoiis by the poisoned mushrooms of Agrippina, and the influence
both of Pallas and Agrippina was on the wane. The Jews laid a formal
impeachment against Felix for his conduct at Caasarea, 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 Prsefect 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 Alexandria * 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.8
Felix himself vanishes henceforth into obscurity and disgrace.
CHAPTER XLII.
ST. PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA II.
" When I consider tliis Apostle as appearing either before the witty Athenians, or
before a Roman Court of Judicature, in the presence of their great men and ladies, I see
of these
how handsomely he accommodateth himself to the apprehension and temper
politer people." SHAFTESBUBT, Characteristics, i. 30.
THE successor of Felix
3 was Porcius Festus (A.D. 60), who, though he too
was probably of no higher rank than that of a froedman, was a far worthier
and more honourable ruler. His Procuratorship was of very brief duration,
i Philo in Place, rvi s A.D. 79. Jos. Antt. p. 7, 2.
* This furnishes one of the few certain points de repttre for the precise chronology of
the Acts. He died the next year.