insurrection of this Judas was the most vigorous attempt to throw off the Roman yoke before the
great war.- Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, 8:27. Strabo mentions a queen of Meroè in Ethiopia,
under that name, which was probably, like Pharaoh, a dynastic title.^1104 - The famine under Claudius, 11:28. This reign (a.d. 41–54) was disturbed by frequent
famines, one of which, according to Josephus, severely affected Judaea and Syria, and caused great
distress in Jerusalem under the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus, a.d. 45.^1105 - The death of King Herod Agrippa I. (grandson of Herod the Great), 12:20–23. Josephus
says nothing about the preceding persecution of the church, but reports in substantial agreement
with Luke that the king died of a loathsome disease in the seventh year of his reign (a.d. 44), five
days after he had received, at the theatre of Caesarea, divine honors, being hailed, in heathen fashion,
as a god by his courtiers.^1106 - The proconsular (as distinct from the propraetorian) status of Cyprus, under Sergius
Paulus, 13:7 (σύν τῶ ἀνθυπάτῳ Σεργίῳ Παύλῳ). Here Luke was for a long time considered
inaccurate, even by Grotius, but has been strikingly confirmed by modern research. When Augustus
assumed the supreme power (b.c. 27), he divided the government of the provinces with the Senate,
and called the ruler of the imperatorial provinces, which needed direct military control under the
emperor as commander of the legions, propraetor (ἀντιστράτηγος) or legate (πρεσβύτης), the ruler
of a senatorial province, proconsul (ἀνθύπατος). Formerly these terms had signified that the holder
of the office had previously been praetor (στρατηγὸςor ἡγεμών) or consul (ὕπατος); now they
signified the administrative heads of the provinces. But this subdivision underwent frequent changes,
so that only a well-informed person could tell the distinction at any time. Cyprus was in the original
distribution (b.c. 27) assigned to the emperor,^1107 but since b.c. 22, and at the time of Paul’s visit
under Claudius, it was a senatorial province;^1108 and hence Sergius Paulus is rightly called proconsul.
Coins have been found from the reign of Claudius which confirm this statement.^1109 Yea, the very
name of (Sergius) Paulus has been discovered by General di Cesnola at Soli (which, next to Salamis,
was the most important city of the island), in a mutilated inscription, which reads: "in the
proconsulship of Paulus."^1110 Under Hadrian the island was governed by a propraetor; under Severus,
again by a proconsul. - The proconsular status of Achaia under Gallio, 18:12 (Γαλλίωνος ἀνθυπάτου ὄντος τῆς
Αχαίας). Achaia, which included the whole of Greece lying south of Macedonia, was originally a
(^1104) Strabo, XVII., p. 820; comp. Pliny IV. 35; Dion Cass., LIV. 5.
(^1105) Josephus, Ant. XX. 5; comp, Tacitus, Ann. XII. 43; Sueton., Claud. 28.
(^1106) Ant. XVIII. 8.
(^1107) Strabo, XIV., at the close.
(^1108) Dio Cassius, LIII. 12.
(^1109) Akerman, Numismatic Illustrations, pp. 39-42.
(^1110) ΤΩΝ ΕΠΙ - ΠΑΥΛΟΥ - [ΑΝΘ]ΥΠΑΤΟΥ. See Louis Palma di Cesnola’s Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples, New
York, 1878, p. 424 sq. He says: "The Proconsul Paulus may be the Sergius Paulus of the Acts of the Apostles 13, as instances
of the suppression of one or two names are not rare." Bishop Lightfoot ("Cont. Review" for 1876, p. 290 sq.) satisfactorily
accounts for the omission of Sergius, and identifies also the name Sergius Paulus from the elder Pliny, who mentions him twice
as a Latin author in the first book of his Natural History and as his chief authority for the facts in the second and eighteenth
books, two of these facts being especially connected with Cyprus. The Consul L. Sergius Paulus, whom Galen the physician
met at Rome a.d. 151, and whom he mentions repeatedly, first under his full name and then simply as Paulus, may have been a
descendant of the convert of the apostle.
A.D. 1-100.