Felix, which exists between the accounts of Josephus and of Tacitus; because, however great this discrepancy might be, it must be unquestionable that a Jewish historian ought to be more entitled to credit, in relation to the affairs of Judæa, than a Roman: nor would this be the only instance where Tacitus might be convicted of either a want of correct information, or of a culpable haste and inaccuracy, with reference to this country in particular. But as to Josephus -in this portion of his history he must have written in some degree from personal observation; for he was thirteen. or fourteen years old in the tenth of Claudius, and, if we may believe his own account, so forward in intellectual proficiency, that, even at that age, the doctors of the Law used to consult him on difficult questions..

The discrepancy, after all, is not insuperable: Tacitus attests that Quadratus was Præfect of Syria not only before, or in, the eleventh of Claudius, but long after it; and that in the twelfth Felix was governor of Judæa, and had been Pridem impositusd. The coins of Quadratus, still extant, begin only from A. U. 808.e at which time it is certain he must have been long in office. I should conjecture that he was appointed in the ninth of Claudius, A. U. 802; and that he had not long been come into the province when the Jewish and Samaritan deputies, in consequence of the dispute of the two nations, had their audience of him at Tyre. His predecessor, Cassius Longinus, had succeeded to Vibius Marsus after the death of Herod Agrippa, A. U. 796: and one of his coins proves him to have been in office A. U. 798. at least. Hence he might well be superseded in A. U. 802. Nor is this supposition inconsistent with the testi

mony of Tacituss, who makes Cassius still president of Syria, when Meherdates was sent from Rome to be placed on the throne of Parthia, A. U. 802: and Cassius the person who conducted him to the banks of the Euphrates. This service would be performed by the summer of that year;

e Vit. 2.

loc. cit.

d Ann. xii. 45. 54. xiv. 26. 8 Ann. xii. 11. 12.

e Eckel. iii. 280.

Ib.

and it would still be possible for Cassius to have been superseded in the ensuing autumn.

Now it is not improbable that, when Cumanus was appointed in the eighth of Claudius, A. U. 801. (the very year before Claudius, a few days after December the 29th, celebrated his marriage with Agrippinah, whom the influence of Pallas had raised to that dignity above her rivals,) or early in the next year, Felix also might be sent out in some co-ordinate capacity; and that the high-priest, Jonathan, who is said to have personally solicited his appointment to the procuratorship after Cumanus, first became acquainted with him in Judæa, and not at Rome.

Be this, however, as it may, the two historians are agreed as to the main facts, that the Galileans had gone to war with the Samaritans; that Roman soldiers had been killed; that Quadratus was presiding governor of Syria; that he had authority to try the Jewish procurator himself; that Felix was, or might have been, present at the trial of Cumanus; and that all these things might have happened about the ninth of Claudius: while Josephus in particular will shew that the agitation in the province could not have been finally quelled (partly by the punishment of the most turbulent among the Jews, and partly by that of the Roman tribune Celer) before his tenthi.

Suetonius, by placing the appointment of Felix over Judæa after the adoption of Nero, is so far in favour of Josephusk; for it is the practice of this biographer, though he does not relate the whole of any life in historical order, yet to relate such portions of it, as he classes together, in the order in which they followed each other. Nero was adopted by Claudius, according to Tacitus, A. U. 803. ineunte1; according to Suetonius, in the eleventh year of his age; which eleventh year was completed December the fifteenth, A. U. 801.m This would fix the time of his adoption to A. U. 802. ineunte, when he had entered on his twelfth year, at the latest; so that, on this point Tacitus is at va

Tac. Ann. xii. 5. 8. Suet. Claud. 29. * Claud. 27. 28. 1 Ann. xii. 25.

i Ant. xx. vi. 2. 3. B. ii. xii. 7. m Ner. 7.6. Capitol. Luc. Ver. i.

riance with Suetonius; and yet that Suetonius is more in the right may be proved from Tacitus himself.

At the time of this adoption Nero was committed to the tuition of Seneca m; and to this tuition he had been committed fourteen years, in the eighth of Nero", that is, between October 13. A. U. 814. and October 13. A. U. 815. This might possibly be the case, if the first year of his tuition was A. U. 801. exeunte, or 802. ineunte; but not if it was A. U. 803. Nero, then, must have been adopted in the ninth of Claudius at the latest; and, consequently, Felix, appointed to Judæa after this adoption, might have been appointed in the tenth; but could not have been before it.

The second of the points of time, which I originally proposed to consider, is not less critical than the first; but, after what has been already established, will be found, perhaps, to be even more so.

When St. Paul, upon leaving Athens, was arrived, for the first time, at Corinth, he met there with Aquila and Priscilla, who were recently come from Italy, because Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Romeo. I have shewn elsewhere? that, in almost every instance of a journey from Italy to Asia, Corinth was the regular thoroughfare; and if Aquila was a native of Pontus, it is probable he was returning to Asia; a conjecture, which is so far confirmed by the subsequent course of events, that it appears he left Corinth at the same time with St. Paul, and afterwards settled in Ephesus4. Nor had he long been arrived in Corinth when St. Paul also came thither; nor, consequently, had the decree of Claudius, by which the Jews had been expelled from Rome or Italy, been long in force.

Now a great number of Jews, most of them libertini generis, or the descendants of such as, having originally been brought to Rome in the capacity of slaves, had recovered their freedom, were living there in the time of Augustus and of Tiberius-and even before that-in the quarter

m Ner. 7. 6. " Ann. xiv. 53. • Acts xviii. 1. 2. ii. 88. Acts xviii. 18. 19. 24. 26.

F Vol. i. Diss.

called Trans Tiberim': eight thousand concurred in the petition against Archelaus, sent from the mother country, A. U. 751s; four thousand were transported to Sardinia A. U. 772'; and at the beginning of the reign of Claudius their numbers were become so considerable, that it was not thought safe, or practicable, to expel them the city, though they were forbidden to assemble together". This being the case, it becomes presumptively an argument that they would not have been expressly driven from Rome at any subsequent period, except for some great and urgent reason; and that they were so expelled some time in the reign of Claudius is attested in general by Suetonius, as well as by St. Luke; though he may have mistaken the cause, or assigned it only in part, when he ascribes it to their constant disturbances, impulsore Chresto; for Christianity, as we have seen, had certainly reached Rome early in the reign of Claudius; and, even in the time of Lactantius, Chrestus was still a common mistake of pronunciation for Christus*.

It is a critical coincidence, however, that Suetonius places this expulsion, about the same time with the occasion when an embassy of Parthians and Armenians was present in Rome. This embassy, I have little doubt, is the embassy alluded to by Tacitus, A. U. 802. when they came to ask for Meherdates. It is placed also about the same time with the restitution of their liberty to the Rhodians, taken away A. U. 797.2 which restitution Tacitus places A. U. 806.a but Suetonius A. U. 804.b in some consulate of Claudius, which must have been his fifth.

C

Jerome, in his Commentary on Dan. ix. quotes from Apollinarius of Laodicea the following passage: Postea.. ab octavo Claudii Cæsaris anno, contra Judæos Romana arma correpta—. Ab octavo means after the eighth, and therefore in the ninth; just as, in a like expression of Ter

tullian's, a duodecimo, meant after the twelfth, and, consequently, in the thirteenth. Now, from whatsoever authority this statement was derived, it is supported by Orosius also; who distinctly places the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in the ninth of Claudius: and what is more, it is entirely in unison with the implicit testimony of Josephus. The disturbance at the passover; the subsequent outrage on Stephanus, the Emperor's freed-man and fiscal procurator; the tumultuary warfare between the Galileans and the Samaritans―all events of the same year, A. U. 802—were the most natural and most likely causes of this act of severity towards the Jews; whose conduct, as regarded at Rome, and until the rupture had been satisfactorily adjusted, partly by the Jewish deputies, and partly by the intercession of the younger Agrippa, would be looked on as a direct rebellion. Tacitus expresses himself strongly to this effect; Arsissetque bello provincia-and Josephus shews that, if actual war was prevented, it was by only the prayers, remonstrances, and entreaties, of the rulers, or chief Jews, themselves; whose efforts and expedients to disarm the infuriated passions of the common people he describes very much to the lifes. Certain it is, that a breach with the Roman government was never so near at any time before the final revolt as now, and in the last year of Caius; and to these two occasions, in particular, I am persuaded our Saviour alluded in the prophecy upon the mount, when he told the disciples that they should hear of wars and rumours, or tidings, of wars, but should see no actual war: the storm, once and again, should gather over Judæa, on the point of bursting upon it; and once and again, as the event proves, it should be seen to pass away without effect, because the end would not be as yet.

The number of Jews, inhabitants of Rome, was certainly too considerable to be tolerated there, with confidence or safety, if the mother country was in a state of revolt. But the news of what had happened in Judæa, especially of d Vol. i. Diss. xi. 436. e vii. 6. B. ii. xii. 5.

Ann. xii. 54.

Ant. xx. vi. 1.