§71 Arrival at Rome (Acts 28:11–16)

28:11 / According to the elder Pliny, the winter season when the seas were closed to navigation ended on 7 or 8 February. We may suppose, then, that the travelers’ three-month stay on Malta ended about then. The ship in which they resumed their journey was another Alexandrian vessel, very likely a grain ship, perhaps driven to the island by the same storm that had brought Paul and the others to its shores. Its “sign” was the twin gods. It may be right to say with GNB that the ship was called by that name, but the expression probably refers to the figurehead (as NIV). Cyril of Alexandria tells us that it was his countrymen’s custom to ornament each side of the prow with figures of deities. In this case, it was with the twin sons of Zeus and Leda, Castor and Pollux, the “patron saints” of navigators in the ancient world. The mention of this irrelevant detail is a sure sign that we have an eyewitness account.

28:12 / The ship carried them first to Syracuse, the Roman capital of Sicily, a distance of about ninety miles from Malta. Here they stayed for three days, waiting, perhaps, for a wind from the south.

28:13 / There is an uncertainty in the Greek text of this verse. One well-supported reading has them “making a circuit” to Rhegium, which is strange, since Rhegium stood in a straight line with Syracuse. The phrase may be a nautical term. Ramsay suggests that they had failed to get the wind that they had been waiting for, but (and this is how he renders the phrase) “were able by good seamanship to work up to Rhegium” (Paul, p. 345). The alternative reading, supplied by the Alexandrian manuscripts, simply has them “casting off.” So they came to Rhegium, a distance of about seventy miles from Syracuse, on the Italian shore of the Strait of Messina. Rhegium owed its importance to the difficulty of navigating the Strait, what with the Whirlpool of Charybdis and the Rock of Scylla, so that ships would wait in its harbor for the most favorable wind from the south. Things now went well for the travelers, for the next day the south wind came up, and they made the voyage of 180 miles to Puteoli in just two days.

28:14 / Puteoli (the modern Pozzuoli), on the Bay of Naples, was at this time the most important harbor in Italy. It was the main terminal for the Alexandrian grain ships and also for travelers from both the East and the West en route for Rome. Here, complained Juvenal, “the Syrian Orontes first disgorged its crowds on the way to the Roman Tiber” (Satires 3.62; see disc. on 11:19). And here a group of Christians was found. They are simply described as brothers, but it may be assumed that they were Christians and therefore to be distinguished from the Jews of verse 17 whom Paul also addressed as “brothers.” The church in Puteoli probably had its roots in Alexandria, since the commerce between these two cities was so considerable. The absence of the definite article in the Greek, “we found brothers,” indicates that the writer had known nothing of their presence beforehand. Paul may have found them through the synagogue, and he was again shown unusual kindness by the officer Julius in being allowed to spend a week with them. This week in Puteoli is best explained by Julius having to report his arrival and receive his orders from his superiors in Rome.

The simple statement at the end of verse 14, and so we came to Rome, not only marks the conclusion of the travel narrative, but is effectively the climax of the whole book. As Bengel long ago remarked, “The victory of the word of God: Paul at Rome, the climax of the Gospel, the conclusion of Acts.” Verse 15 is little more than an addendum, mentioning some details of the short journey by land to the capital. Indeed, all the remaining verses of the book may be regarded in this light, as simply rounding off the statement of verse 14 by showing how the gospel was preached in Rome as it had been at first “in Jerusalem,” then “in all Judea and Samaria” and in all of the places by which it had come to the “ends of the earth” (1:8). Their route for the last part of the journey probably took them by the Via Campana to Capua, some twenty miles from Puteoli. Here they would have joined the Via Appia, that “worn and well-known track, queen of the long roads” (Statius, Silvae 2.2.12), and by this road completed the remaining 120 miles to Rome.

28:15 / The Christians of the capital had received news of Paul’s coming—either he had sent word himself or the Christians of Puteoli had—and a number of them came out to meet the party (cf. Rom. 16:24). There were two groups. One met them in advance at the Forum of Appius (Forum Appii) and the other nearer Rome at Three Taverns (Tres Tabernae). The former of these two staging places lay about forty-three miles from Rome. Horace claimed that travelers covered the distance from the capital to Forum Appii in one day, though he himself preferred to take two. He had no high opinion of the town, describing it as “crammed with boatmen and stingy tavern keepers” (Satires 1.5.3–6). The town formed the northern terminus of a canal that ran through the Pontine Marshes to Feronia, and the boatmen of whom Horace complained were employed in conveying passengers in boats towed by mules along the canal. The Appian Way ran parallel with the canal, so that the centurion and his charges might have traveled by either. The uncertainty as to which way they would come no doubt made the Christians wait where they did. The other town, Tres Tabernae, was also a frequent halting place, about thirty-three miles from Rome. It may well have been that the three tabernae of its name were inns, but not necessarily. A taberna in Latin is any shop at all. Here the party met up with the second group of Christians, and this proof that there were people in Rome who were ashamed neither of the gospel nor of Paul, a prisoner for the gospel’s sake, was cause for his thanks to God and for great encouragement.

28:16 / As the text stands, we simply have a brief notice of Paul’s arrival in Rome and of his being allowed to live privately, though with a soldier guarding him. The Western text, however, adds the interesting detail that the centurion handed the prisoners over as a group to “the commander” (Gk. stratopedarch). Even if this addition was no part of Luke’s original narrative, it may well reflect a genuine tradition. It is not unlikely that Julius would at first have reported to the Castra Praetoria, the camp of the Praetorians. In that case, the commander in question may have been Afranius Burrus, who died A.D. 62. It is striking that both before and after him there were two prefects (Tacitus, Annals 12.42; 14.51), whereas the singular of this text may reflect that Burrus held office alone. Of course, the reference may only be to the prefect in charge of prisoners whether he had a colleague or not (but see Sherwin-White, p. 110).

If indeed the prisoners were taken to the Castra Praetoria, which lay beyond the walls to the northwest of the city, they must have had to cross the city, having entered it by the Porta Capena in the south. Thus they would have had opportunity to observe what the elder Pliny described (about this time) as a city that exceeded in size any in the world (Natural History 3.66f.) and to experience, in Horace’s words, “the smoke and the wealth and the roar of Rome,” the capital and hub of the Empire (Odes 3.29.12).