And for this crime the slavish and degraded Senate vowed gifts to the temples! In those days every unjust banishment, every judicial murder inflicted by the Emperor, was the signal for a fresh outburst of infamous adulation. The thanksgivings to the gods, which had once been the signs of public prosperity, became the certain memorials of private infamy and public disaster.
CHAPTER XLVII
A FETTERED AMBASSADOR
Ὥστε τοὺς δεσμοὺς μου φανεροὺς ἐν Χριστῷ γενέσθαι ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ Πραιτωρίῳ καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς μᾶσι.—Ep. S. Paul, ad Phil. i. 13.
There was one spot in Rome which was calm amid all tumults, happy amid all calamities, though it was the last place where any of the Roman world would have deemed it possible for happiness to dwell. It was the narrow room which served as a prison to Paul of Tarsus.
As long as Burrus was Præfect of the Prætorians the prisoner’s lot had been made as easy as the strictness of Roman discipline allowed. He had been allowed to hire a lodging of his own, and no hindrance was placed on the visits or kindly offices of his friends. He was, indeed, compelled to submit to the one intolerable condition of being fastened night and day by a coupling-chain to the wrist of a Roman soldier; but Julius and others had spoken to Burrus about him in such warm terms that, as in the case of Agrippa I., care was taken that he should be consigned to the charge of a kind centurion, and that the Prætorians to whom in turn he was chained should, as far as possible, be good-tempered and reasonable men.
There was no service which the soldiers more hated than this of guarding prisoners. Each soldier was for the time as much a prisoner as the prisoner to whom he was chained. To be chained to a Jew was regarded by most of the Prætorians as an intolerable humiliation. If indeed the Jew happened to be a handsome and cosmopolitan young prince like Agrippa, the duty had its alleviations; but at the present time the soldiers had in charge some Jewish priests sent to Rome by Festus, who shuddered to be brought into contact with them. To be chained to these haughty hierarchs, who did not conceal their disdain for their gentile guards, was a cause of incessant annoyance, and there was not a Prætorian who did not groan when it was rumored that Julius had consigned to them another Jew, of weak bodily presence, and with health enfeebled by toil and hardship.
But the soldiers to whose lot it first fell to be coupled to the new prisoner soon spread a favourable report of him. They told their comrades that though he was not only a Jew, but a Christian, he was yet so sweetly reasonable, so generously considerate, so anxious to alleviate the necessary tedium of their duty, that it was a pleasure, and not a misery, to take a turn in guarding him. Unlike the priests, he seemed to take a human interest in everything human. He would talk freely with them on gentile subjects. He listened earnestly to all they had to tell him of Rome, its daily incidents and accidents, its senatorial debates, its foreign campaigns, the edicts of the Emperor, and the fortunes of the imperial family. It was whispered that everything which he did and said was worthy and noble, and the centurions observed a marked change for the better in some of the men who had been brought into contact with him. The Jews, it was noticed, looked on him with hatred as a renegade, and even of the Jewish Christians there were few who visited him. But some Christian was almost always with him, and these friends of his, particularly the modest and engaging Timotheus, deepened the favourable impression which the prisoner himself had made.
In truth, this was not the least happy period of Paul’s career. He was freed from the fret of endless anxiety and embittered opposition; he was no longer harassed by the multiform and terrible perils by which for so many years his life had been assailed. To many the forced cessation of the great work of their careers would have seemed an intolerable trial, and faith would have been weakened by the semblance of God’s desertion. It was not so with Paul. He knew that he was where God meant him to be, and that he was still an ambassador, though, as he playfully said to his friends, an ambassador in a coupling-chain.
He ought in justice to have been brought to speedy trial, seeing that he had already been imprisoned for two years at Cæsarea on a charge wholly without foundation. But in his shipwreck the documents sent by Felix and Festus had been lost, and when fresh documents came Nero’s capricious idleness put off the trial from month to month. So Paul continued in prison, and became a missionary to the Prætorium, and to many Romans. His imprisonment was not lacking in elements of interest. Linus and many of the Roman Christians sought his lodging, and showed him every mark of affection. Luke was constantly with him, consulted with him about every detail of his Gospel, and took charge of his health. He was in frequent correspondence with his friends and with the converts of the churches which he had founded. Timotheus, who was the child of his heart, treated him with all the tenderness of a son. Tychicus and Epaphras came from Asia, and brought him news of the Church of Ephesus and of the valleys of the Lycus. Mark, the cousin of his first companion, Barnabas, came to cheer him with news of Peter and of Jerusalem, and of his travels in many lands. Epaphroditus ministered to his necessities by bringing him a gift from his beloved and generous Philippians. The soldiers heard the letters which he dictated to his converts, and heard what Luke read to him of his Gospel. Many of them were deeply influenced by the new world of thought and holiness which was thus revealed to them. Some were converted and baptised, and found that the lodging of the Jewish prisoner was to them the vestibule of the house of God.
And when the soldier on guard was a brother, the intercourse which the prisoner could hold with any who came to visit him was unconstrained. Most of all was this the case when the Prætorian Celsus was chained to him, and the veteran soldier was so happy in the charge that he was ready to relieve any Prætorian by taking his turn in addition to his own. It was the armour of Celsus, as it lay beside him on the floor, dinted with the blows of many a battle, which suggested to Paul his beautiful description of the Christian panoply.