The life and work of St. Paul

THE VOtAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 561
remarking oft all sides that Paul was undeserving of death, or even of imprisonment.
Ho had made, in fact, a deeply favourable impression. Agrippa's
decision was given entirely for his acquittal. "This person," he said to
Festus, " might have been permanently set at liberty, if he had not appealed
to Csesar." Agrippa was far too little of a Pharisee, and far too much of a
man of the world, not to see that mere freedom of thought could not be, and
ought not to be, suppressed by external violence. The proceedings of that
day probably saved St. Paul's life full two years afterwards. Festus, since
his own opinion, on grounds of Roman justice, were so entirely confirmed
from the Jewish point of view by the Protector of the Temple, could hardly
fail to scud to Nero an elogium which freely exonerated the prisoner from
every legal charge ; and even if Jewish intrigues were put in play against
him, Nero could not condemn to death a man whom Felix, and Lysias, and
Festus, and Agrippa, and even the Jewish Sanhedrin, in the only trial of the
case which they had hold, had united in pronouncing innocent of any capital
dime.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK.
" Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida, nee Auster
Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae." Hon. Od. iii. 3, 5.
" The flattering wind that late with promised aid
From Candia's bay the unwilling ship betrayed,
No longer fawns, beneath the fair disguise,
But like a ruffian on his quarry flies."
FALCONER, Shipwreck, canto ii.
AT the earliest opportunity which offered, St. Paul, and such otker prisoners 1
as were waiting the result of an appeal, were despatched to Italy under the
charge of Julius, a centurion of an Augustan cohort. This Augustan cohort
may either be some local troop of soldiers of that name stationed at Csesarea,
since the name " Augustan " was as common as " Royal " among us ;
or they
may have belonged to the body of Augustani veterans originally enrolled
by Augustus as a body-guard ;
2 or they may have been the Praetorian guards
themselves, who occasionally, though not frequently, were sent out of Italy
on imperial missions. 3 It is not, however, said that Julius was accompanied
by his cohort, and it is not at all impossible that he may have been sent with
a few of those chosen soldiers of the most distinguished Roman regiment*
1 xxv ii. 1. ffcpout is not necessarily used with classical accuracy to denote "prisoner*
of a different class " (Luke viii. 3; Mark xv. 41).
2 It certainly was not a cohort of "Sebasteni, "i.e., natives of Sebaste, the nara
which Hierod had given to Samaria (Jos. B. J. ii. 12, 5).
* Pliny, H. N. vi. 35. (Lewin, ii 183.)
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