murder of
Agrippina, and Seneca's justifications of it, had been absorbing the
attention of the Roman world, there disembarked at Puteoli a troop of
prisoners, whom the Procurator of Judaea had sent to Rome under the
charge of a centurion. Walking among them, chained and weary, but
affectionately tended by two younger companions,[38] and treated with
profound respect by little deputations of friends who met him at Appii
Forum and the Three Taverns, was a man of mean presence and
weather-beaten aspect, who was handed over like the rest to the charge
of Burrus, the Praefect of the Praetorian Guards. Learning from the
letters of the Jewish Procurator that the prisoner had been guilty of no
serious offence,[39] but had used his privilege of Roman citizenship to
appeal to Caesar for protection against the infuriated malice of his
co-religionists--possibly also having heard from the centurion Julius
some remarkable facts about his behaviour and history--Burrus allowed
him, pending the hearing of his appeal, to live in his own hired
apartments.[40] This lodging was in all probability in that quarter of
the city opposite the island in the Tiber, which corresponds to the
modern Trastevere. It was the resort of the very lowest and meanest of
the populace--that promiscuous jumble of all nations which makes Tacitus
call Rome at this time "the sewer of the universe." It was here
especially that the Jews exercised some of the meanest trades in Rome,
selling matches, and old clothes, and broken glass, or begging and
fortune-telling on the Cestian or Fabrican bridges.[41] In one of these
narrow, dark, and dirty streets, thronged by the dregs of the Roman
populace, St. Mark and St. Peter had in all probability lived when they
founded the little Christian Church at Rome. It was undoubtedly in the
same despised locality that St. Paul,--the prisoner who had been
consigned to the care of Burrus,--hired a room, sent for the principle
Jews, and for two years taught to Jews and Christians, to any Pagans who
would listen to him, the doctrines which were destined to regenerate
the world.

[Footnote 38: Luke and Aristarchus.]

[Footnote 39: Acts xxiv. 23, xxvii. 3.]

[Footnote 40: Acts xxviii. 30, [Greek: en idio misthomati].]

[Footnote 41: MART. _Ep_. i. 42: JUV. xiv. 186. In these few paragraphs
I follow M. Aubertin, who (as well as many other authors) has collected
many of the principal passages in which Roman writers allude to the Jews