Roman soldiers and Roman slave-dealers' invaded the shores of Britain. The trade of all the countries which surrounded the Mediterranean began to flow towards Rome. The great city herself was passive, for she had nothing to export. But the cravings of her luxury, and the necessities of her vast population, drew to one centre the converging lines of a busy traffic from a wide extent of provinces. To leave out of view what hardly concerns us here, the commerce by land from the North, some of the principal directions of trade by sea may be briefly enumerated as follows. The harbors of Ostia and Puteoli were constantly full of ships from the West, which had brought wool and other articles from Cadiz:' a circumstance which possesses some interest for us here, as illustrating the mode in which St. Paul might hope to accomplish his voyage to Spain (Rom. xv. 24). On the South was Sicily, often called the Store-house of Italy, and Africa, which sent furniture-woods to Rome, and heavy cargoes of marble and granite. On the East, Asia Minor was the intermediate space through which the caravan-trade' passed, conveying silks and spices from beyond the Euphrates to the markets and wharves of Ephesus. We might extend this enumeration by alluding to the fisheries of the Black Sea, and the wine-trade of the Archipelago. But enough has been said to give some notion of the commercial activity of which Italy was the centre: and our particular attention here is required only to one branch of trade, one line of constant traffic across the waters of the Mediterranean to Rome.

Alexandria has been mentioned already as a city, which, next after Athens, exerted the strongest intellectual influence over the age in which St. Paul's appointed work was done; and we have had occasion to notice some indirect connection between this city and the Apostle's own labors." But it was eminent commercially not less than intellectually. The prophetic views of Alexander were at that time receiving an ampler fulfilment than at any former period. The trade with the Indian seas, which had been encouraged under the Ptolemies, received a vast impulse in the reign of Augustus: and under the reigns of his successors, the valley of the Nile was the channel of an active transit trade in spices, dyes, jewels,

1 See the passage in Pitt's speeches, referred to in Milman's Gibbon, i. p. 70.

2 For example, the amber trade of the Baltic, and the importing of provisions and rough cloths from Cisalpine Gaul.

8 We may refer here, in illustration, to the coin representing Ostia below, p. 743. It was about this time that the new harbor of Portus (a city not unconnected with ecclesiastical history) was completed by Nero on the north side

of the mouth of the Tiber. See the article "Ostia” in Dr. Smith's Dict. of Geography.

There seem to have been two great lines of inland trade through Asia Minor, one near the southern shore of the Black Sea, through the districts opened by the campaigns of Pompey, and the other through the centre of the country from Mazaca, on the Euphrates, to Ephesus.

5 See pp. 8, 9, 33, 407.

and perfumes, which were brought by Arabian mariners from the far East, and poured into the markets of Italy. But Egypt was not only the medium of transit trade. She had her own manufactures of linen, paper, and glass, which she exported in large quantities. And one natural product of her soil has been a staple commodity from the time of Pharaoh to our own. We have only to think of the fertilizing inundations of the Nile, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the multitudes composing the free and slave population of Italy, in order to comprehend the activity and importance of the Alexandrian corn-trade. At a later period the Emperor Commodus established a company of merchants to convey the supplies from Egypt to Rome; and the commendations which he gave himself for this forethought may still be read in the inscription round the ships represented on his coins. The harbor to which the Egyptian corn-vessels were usually bound was Puteoli. At the close of this chapter we shall refer to some passages which give an animated picture of the arrival of these ships. Meanwhile, it is well to have called attention to this line of traffic between Alexandria and Puteoli; for in so doing we have described the means which Divine Providence employed for bringing the Apostle to Rome.

The transition is easy from the commerce of the Mediterranean to the progress of travellers from point to point in that sea. If to this enumeration of the main lines of traffic by sea we add all the ramifications of the coasting-trade which depended on them, we have before us a full view of the opportunities which travellers possessed of accomplishing their voyages. Just in this way we have lately seen St Paul completing the journey, on which his mind was set, from Philippi, by Miletus and Patara, to Cæsarea (Ch. XX.). We read of no periodical packets for the conveyance of passengers sailing between the great towns of the Mediterranean. Emperors themselves were usually compelled to take advantage of the same opportunities to which Jewish pilgrims and Christian Apostles were limited. When Vespasian went to Rome, leaving Titus to prosecute the siege of Jerusalem, "he went on board a merchant-ship, and sailed from Alexandria to Rhodes," and thence pursued his way through Greece to the Adriatic, and finally went to Rome through Italy by land.' And when the Jewish war was ended, and when, suspicions having arisen concerning the allegiance of Titus to Vespasian, the son was anxious "to rejoin his father," he also left Alexandria in a "merchant-ship," and "hastened to Italy," touching at the very places

1 See the history of this trade in Dean Vincent's Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients. 2 One of them is given (from Mr. Smith's work) on the titlepage.

Joseph. War, vii. 2, 1. 4 Suet. Tit. c. 5.

at which St. Paul touched, first at Rhegium (xxviii. 13), and then at Puteoli (Ib.).

If such was the mode in which even royal personages travelled from the provinces to the metropolis, we must of course conclude that those who travelled on the business of the state must often have been content to avail themselves of similar opportunities. The sending of state prisoners to Rome from various parts of the Empire was an event of frequent occurrence. Thus we are told by Josephus,' that Felix, "for some slight offence, bound and sent to Rome several priests of his acquaintance, honorable and good men, to answer for themselves to Cæsar." Such groups must often have left Cæsarea and the other Eastern ports, in merchant-vessels bound for the West; and such was the departure of St. Paul, when the time at length came for that eventful journey, which had been so long and earnestly cherished in his own wishes; so emphatically foretold by divine revelation;' and which was destined to involve such great consequences to the whole future of Christianity.

5

The vessel in which he sailed, with certain other state prisoners, was a ship of Adramyttium" apparently engaged in the coasting-trade, and at that time (probably the end of summer or the beginning of autumn) bound on her homeward voyage. Whatever might be the harbors at which she intended to touch, her course lay along the coast of the province of Asia. Adramyttium was itself a seaport in Mysia, which (as we have seen) was a subdivision of that province: and we have already described it as situated in the deep gulf which recedes beyond the base of Mount Ida, over against the island of Lesbos, and as connected by good roads with Pergamus and Troas on the coast, and the various marts in the interior of the peninsula.

1 Joseph. Life, c. 3. 2 Rom. xv. 23.

8 Acts xix. 21; xxiii. 11. See xxvii. 24.

The words " meaning to sail by the coasts of Asia" (v. 2) should rather be applied to the ship ("about to sail," &c.). They seem to imply that she was about to touch at several places on her way to Adramyttium. Probably she was a small coaster, similar to those of the modern Greeks in the same seas: and doubtless the Alexandrian corn-ship mentioned afterwards was much larger.

This we infer, partly because it is reasonable to suppose that they expected to reach Italy before the winter, partly because of the delays which are expressly mentioned before the consultation at Fair Havens. See p. 696.

• For the meaning of the word "Asia" in

Since St. Paul never reached the

the New Testament, we need only refer again to p. 205, &c. It is of the utmost consequence to bear this in mind. If the continent of Asia were intended, the passage would be almost unmeaning. Yet Falconer says (Diss. on St. Paul's Voyage, on the wind Euroclydon, and the Apostle's shipwreck on the Island Melita, by a Layman. Oxf. 1817), "They who conducted the ship meant to sail on their return by the coasts of Asia; accordingly, the next day after they set sail, they touched at Sidon," p. 4. Nor are we to suppose Asia Minor intended, which seems to be the supposition even of some of the most careful commentators.

1 P. 240; and see p. 596. We need hardly allude to the error of Grotius, who supposed Adrumetum, on the African coast, to be meant. Mr. Lewin assumes that the intention of Julius