The life and work of St. Paul

'St. P.A.U1 BEFO&E l(JRlPiA 11. 657
aristocracy of Caesarea, both Jewish and Gentile. Festtts ordered the
auditorium to be prepared for the occasion, and invited all the chief officers
of the army, and the principal inhabitants of the town. The Herods were
fond of show, and Festus gratified their humour by a grand processional
display. He would doubtless appear in his scarlet paludament, with his full
attendance of lictors and body-guard, who would stand at arms behind the
gilded chairs which were placed for himself and his distingiiished visitors.
We are expressly told that Agrippa and Berenice went in state to the
Prsetorium, eho, doubtless, blazing with all her jewels, and he in his purple
robes, and both with the golden circlets of royalty around then* foreheads, and
attended by a suite of followers in the most gorgeous apparel of Eastern
pomp. It was a compliment to the new governor to visit him with as much
splendour as possible, and both he and his guests were not sorry to furnish a
spectacle which would at once illustrate their importance and their mutual
cordiality. Did Agrippa think of his great-grandfather Herod, and the
massacre of the innocents ? of his great-uncle Antipas, and the murder of
John the Baptist P of his father Agrippa I., and the execution of James the
Elder ? Did he recall the fact that they had each died or been disgraced,
soon after, or in direct consequence of, those inflictions of martyrdom ? Did
he realise how closely, but unwittingly, the faith in that " one Jesus " had
been linked with the destinies of his house? Did the pomp of to-day remind
him of the pomp sixteen years earlier, when his much more powerful father
had stood in the theatre, with the sunlight blazing on the tissued silver of his
robe, and the people shouting that he was a god ? l Did none of the dark
memories of the place overshadow him as he entered that former palace of his
race ? It is very unlikely. Extreme vanity, gratified self-importance, far
more probably absorbed the mind of this titular king, as, in all the pomp of
phantom sovereignty, he swept along the large open hall, seated himself with
his beautiful sister by the Procurator's side, and glanced with cold curiosity
on the poor, worn, shackled prisoner pale with sickness and long imprisonment
who was led in at his command.
Festus opened the proceedings in a short, complimentary speech, in which
he found an excuse for the gathering, by saying that on the one hand the Jews
were extremely infuriated against this man, and that on the other he was
entirely innocent, so far as he could see, of any capital crime. Since, however,
he was a Roman citizen, and had appealed to Caesar, it was necessary to send
to " the Lord " a some minute of the case, by way of elogium, and he was
completely perplexed as to what he ought to say. He was, therefore, glad of
the opportunity to bring the prisoner before this distinguished assembly, that
they, and especially King Agrippa, might hear what he had to say for himself,
and so, by forming some sort of preliminary judgment, relieve Festus from
the ridiculous position of sending a prisoner without being able to state any
definite crime with which he had been charged.
A.D. 44. It was now A.D. 60. xxr. 26,