Travellers: detail of a funerary relief from Arlon (Orolaunum) in Belgium (third century A.D.). The two figures, well wrapped in woollen cloaks against the cool
northern climes, are seated in a wagon. The Roman peace (and the road system) facilitated long-distance journeys, but communications were still painfully slow by
modern standards.
A single city could present an extraordinary cultural diversity between the town and the surrounding country, and even within the town itself. Paul and Barnabas,
performing a cure at Lystra in Lycaonia (Asia Minor), were hailed as Zeus and Hermes by the local people shouting 'in the Lycaonian language' (Acts 14:8 ff.). The
priest of Zeus was all for making a sacrifice, as he brought oxen and garlands to the gates of the town from his temple outside the walls, but was dissuaded, and the
evangelists' visit was terminated when hostile Jews from the cities of Pisidian Antioch and Iconium provoked the evidently volatile crowd into pelting them with
stones. Despite this misadventure, the journeys of St Paul generally show him exploiting the modest social prestige of a man who had I inherited the Roman
citizenship from his father in the days when, as Tacitus remarked of a Gallic Roman citizen of the same period, that honour was given only rarely and in recognition
of merit.
A Jew from Tarsus, he no doubt belonged at Jerusalem to that community of Jews from Greek cities who stirred up hostility to Stephen (Acts 6: 9-ff.). Then, after
his conversion and decision to turn to the Gentiles-that is, to the non-Jewish Greek communities of the East-he travelled from city to city, attracted particularly to
centres where Greek culture, philosophical learning, and Roman officials were to be found; finally using his status as a citizen to appeal to the Roman Emperor, he
went to Rome and for a time lived there, among many thousands of Graeco-Orientals who had settled there before him. Jesus of Nazareth, in contrast with this
picture of physical and cultural mobility, pursued his mission in the villages and townships of local communities, eventually meeting his death during his single