omp with their attendants; all the officers
of the army and the principal men of the city were also present. It was
the most splendid audience that Paul had ever addressed. He was equal to
the occasion, and delivered a discourse on his familiar topics,--his own
miraculous conversion and his mission to the Gentiles to preach the
crucified and risen Christ,--things new to Festus, who thought that Paul
was visionary, and had lost his balance from excess of learning.
Agrippa, however, familiar with Jewish law and the prophecies concerning
the Messiah, was much impressed with Paul's eloquence, and exclaimed:
"Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian!" When the assembly broke
up, Agrippa said, "This man might have been set at liberty, if he had
not appealed unto Caesar." Paul, however, did not wish to be set at
liberty among bitter and howling enemies; he preferred to go to Rome,
and would not withdraw his appeal. So in due time he embarked for Italy
under the charge of a centurion, accompanied with other prisoners and
his friends Timothy, Luke, and Aristarchus of Thessalonica.

The voyage from Caesarea to Italy was a long one, and in the autumn was
a dangerous one, as in Paul's case it unfortunately proved.

The following spring, however, after shipwreck and divers perils and
manifold fatigues, Paul arrived at Rome, in the year 61 A.D., in the
seventh year of the Emperor Nero. Here the centurion handed Paul over to
the prefect of the praetorian guards, by whom he was subjected to a
merely nominal custody, although, according to Roman custom, he was
chained to a soldier. But he was treated with great lenity, was allowed
to have lodgings, to receive his friends freely, and to hold Christian
meetings in his own house; and no one molested him. For two years Paul
remained at Rome, a fettered prisoner it is true, but cheered by
friendly visits, and attended by Luke, his "beloved physician" and
biographer, by Timothy and other devoted disciples. During this second
imprisonment Paul could see very little outside the praetorian barracks,
but his friends brought him the news, and he had ample time to write
letters. He had no intercourse with gifted and fortunate Romans; his
acquaintance was probably confined to the praetorian soldiers, and some
of the humbler classes who sought Christian instruction. But from this
period we date many of his epistles, on which his fame and influence
largely rest as a theologian and man of genius. Am