(3) A further member of the family, Sergia Paullina,
daughter of Lucius, is attested as a major landowner in
central Asia Minor in the early second century (Mitchell
1993: I, 151–2, and II, 7).If the younger Lucius Sergius Paullus mentioned in (1) was indeed
the brother of the Sergia Paulla mentioned in (2), then we can
assume that the career of this younger Sergius Paullus must have
been contemporary with that of Caristanius Fronto: that is, the
second half of the first century. This means that his father, also
called Lucius Sergius Paullus, must have been active a genera-
tion earlier, in the middle of the first century. If so, he was perhaps
the same man as the governor of Cyprus encountered by Paul.
An elder Lucius Sergius Paullus of the correct date is listed as
a senator who was one of the curators of the Tiber banks on an
inscription from Rome under Claudius (Corpus Inscriptionum
LatinarumVI, no. 31545). He was perhaps also the Lucius
Sergius Paullus who was a suffect consul in c.70.
This is the man Mitchell identifies as the Sergius Paullus
whom Paul converted. If this deduction is correct, then the reason
for Paul’s journey from Cyprus to Antioch in Pisidia, bypassing
the coastal cities, becomes apparent. Sergius Paullus, impressed
by Paul, suggested to him that he should take his preaching of
the gospel to Anticoh in Pisidia, where the governor’s family
had strong connections (Mitchell 1993: II, 7). Mitchell’s case is
mainly circumstantial, but it has an air of plausibility about it.
That said, it is difficult to predict if it will ever command the
assent of New Testament commentators. The link between the
Sergius Paullus of Actsand the Lucius Sergius Paullus who had
been a curator of the Tiber banks under Claudius had been drawn
before Mitchell, but New Testament scholars were reluctant to
accept it. In the view of one commentator on Actswriting before
Mitchell, the identification was ‘weakly based’ (Marshall 1980:
219). More recently Hans-Josef Klauck has similarly regarded the
link with scepticism (Klauck 2000a: 50–1). It is not impossible
that the governor of Cyprus and the curator of the Tiber banks
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