The life and work of St. Paul

582 THE LI?E A2TD WORK OF Bit PAUL.
liberated, except such a glimpse of it as he may have caught on his way to hia
place of confinement. Although his friends had free access to him, he was
not permitted to visit them, nor could & chained Jewish prisoner walk about
with his guarding soldier. Yet on his way to the Praetorian barracks he must
have seen something of the narrow and tortuous streets, as well as of the great
open spaces of ancient Borne ; something of the splendour of it6 public edifices,
and the meanness of its lower purlieus ; something of its appalling contrast
between the ostentatious luxury of inexhaustible wealth, and the painful
squalor of chronic pauperism. 1 And during his stay ho must have seen or
heard much of the dangers which beset those densely-crowded masses of
8 human beings ; of men injured by the clumsy carrucae rumbling along with
huge stones or swaying pieces of timber; 8 of the crashing fall of houses
raised on weak foundations to storey after storey of dangerous height; 4 of
women and children trampled down amid the rush of an idle populace to
witness the horrid butcheries of the amphitheatre ;
marauders of the ;
irresistible fury of the many conflagrations. 6
of the violence of nightly
It is obvious
that he would not have been allowed to seek a lodging in the Jewish quarter
beyond the Tiber, since he would be obliged to consult the convenience of the
successions of soldiers whose duty it was to keep guard over him. It is
indeed possible that he might have been located near the Excubitorium, but
it seems more likely that the Pratorians who were settled there were too
much occupied with the duties thrown on them by their attendance at the
palace to leave them leisure to guard an indefinite number of prisoners.
We infer, therefore, that Paul's "hired apartment" was within close range
of the Praetorian camp. Among the prisoners there confined ho might have
seen the Jewish priests who had been sent to Borne by Felix, and who won
from their nation so much approval by the abstinence which they endured in
the determination that they would not be defiled by any form of unclean
meat. 6
Here, too, he may have seen Caradoc, the British prince whose heroic
resistance and simple dignity extorted praise even from Roman enemies, 7
The fact that he was not in the crowded city precincts would enable him at
less cost to get a better room than the stifling garrets which Juvenal so
feelingly describes as at once ruinously expensive and distressingly inconvenient.
Considering that he was a prisoner, his life was not dull. If he had
to suSer from deep discouragements, he could also thank God for many a
happy alleviation of his lot. He had indeed to bear the sickness of hope
deferred, and put up with the bitterness of " the law's delays." His trial was
indefinitely postponed perhaps by the loss, during shipwreck, of the elogium
of Festus ; by the Hop-appearance of hia accusers ; by their plea for timo to
procure the necessary witnesses ; or by
Juv. Sat. iii. 128- -189.
Juv. Sat. iii. 235 ; Tac. Ann. xv. 38.
Juv. Sat. iii. 254201 : Mart. v. 22.
Juv. iii. 197, teq.
Jos. Met. 3.
the frivoloiis and inhuman carelessness
* Id. 239, seq.. 190 - 31.
7 Tac. Ann, xii. 38 ; H. iii, -15.