The life and work of St. Paul

576 THE LItfE AND WOBK Of ST. PAUL.
Greek-like gaiety and many-coloured brilliance, how soon they would be bttried
by the neighbouring mountain in their total and sulphurous destruction.
Here, free and among brethren, Paul passed seven peaceful days. On the
eighth they started for Rome, which was only distant a hundred and forty
miles. News of their arrival had reached the brethren, and when they had
gone about a hundred miles, past Capua, and through the rich vineyards of
Italy, and then through the Pomptine Marshes, Paul and Luke and Aris-
tarchus, among the bargees and hucksters who thronged Appii Forum, 1
caught sight of a body of Christians, who had come no less than forty miles
to welcome them. Farther than this they could not have come, since there
were two ways of reaching Home from Appii Forum, and the centurion might
have preferred the less fatiguing journey by the canal. Ten miles further on,
at Tres Tabernse, they found another group of brethren awaiting them.
Though there were a few who loved him at Rome, Paul knew the power, the
multitude, and the turbulence of the vast assemblage of synagogues in the
great city, and on their favour or opposition much of his future destiny must,
humanly speaking, depend. It was natural, therefore, that when he saw the
little throng of Christians he should thank God, and take courage from this
proof of their affection. Nothing cheered and inspired him so much as human
sympathy, and the welcome of these brethren must have touched with the
brightness of a happy omen his approach to a city which, greatly as he had
longed to see it, he was now to enter under circumstances far more painful
than he had ever had reason to expect.
And so through scenes of ever-deepening interest, and along a road more
and more crowded with stately memorials, the humble triumph of the Lord's
slave and prisoner swept on. St. Paul had seen many magnificent cities, but
iiover one which was approached by a road so regular and so costly in construc-
tion. As they passed each well-known object, the warm-hearted brethren
would point out to him the tombs of the Scipios and Csecilia Metella, and the
thousands of other tombs with all their architectural beauty, and striking bas-
and the low seats for the accommodation of
reliefs and touching inscriptions ;
travellers at every forty feet ; and the numberless statues of the Dei Yiales ;
and the roadside inns, and the endless streams of carriages for travellers of
every rank humble birotae and comfortable rhedae, and stately carpenta
and the lecticae or palanquins borne on the necks of slaves, from which the
occupants looked luxuriously down on throngs of pedestrians passing to and
from the mighty capital of the ancient world.
" What conflux issuing forth or passing in ;
Praetors, Proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state,
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power,
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings ;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits, on the Appian road . .
Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed."
i HOT. Sat. L T. 4.