governor of the island,' who had some possessions near the place where the vessel was lost, and who had given a hospitable reception to the shipwrecked strangers, and supplied their wants for three days. The disease under which the father of Publius was suffering was dysentery in an aggravated form. St. Paul went in to him and prayed, and laid his hands on him; and he recovered. This being noised through the island, other sufferers came to the Apostle, and were healed. Thus he was empowered to repay the kindness of these islanders by temporal services intended to lead their minds to blessings of a still higher kind. And they were not wanting in gratitude to those whose unexpected visit had brought so much good among them. They loaded them with every honor in their power, and, when they put to sea again, supplied them with every thing that was needful for their wants (ver. 10). Before we pursue the concluding part of the voyage, which was so prosperous that hardly any incident in the course of it is recorded, it may be useful to complete the argument by which Malta is proved to be the scene of St. Paul's shipwreck, by briefly noticing some objections which have been brought against this view. It is true that the positive evidence already adduced is the strongest refutation of mere objections; but it is desirable not to leave unnoticed any of the arguments which appear to have weight on the other side. Some of them have been carelessly brought together by a great writer, to whom, on many subjects, we might be glad to yield our assent. Thus it is argued, that, because the vessel is said to have been drifting in the Adriatic, the place of shipwreck must have been, not Malta to the south of Sicily, but Meleda in the Gulf of Venice. It is no wonder that the Benedictine of conclusive facts: - The narrative speaks of Ragusa should have been jealous of the honor of his order, which had a convent on that small island. But it is more surprising that the view should have been maintained by other writers since. For not only do the classical poets' use the name " Adria" for all that natural division of the Mediterranean which lies between Sicily and Greece, but the same phraseology is found in historians and geographers. Thus Ptolemy distinguishes clearly between the Adriatic Sea and the Adriatic Gulf. Pausanias says that the Straits of Messina unite the Tyrrhene Sea with the Adriatic Sea; and Procopius considers Malta as lying on the boundary of the latter. Nor are the other objections more successful. It is argued that Alexandrian sailors could not possibly have been ignorant of an island so well known as Malta was then. But surely they might have been very familiar with the harbor of Valetta, without being able to recognize that part of the coast on which they came during the A modern sailor who had made many passages between New York and Liverpool might yet be perplexed if he found himself in hazy weather on some part of the coast of Wales. Besides, we are told that the seamen did recognize the island as soon as they were ashore. It is contended also that the people of Malta would not have been called barbarians. But, if the sailors were Greeks (as they probably were), they would have employed this term, as a matter of course, of those who spoke a different language from their own. Again it is argued that there are no vipers that there is hardly any wood-in Malta. But who does not recognize here the natural changes which result from the increase of inhabitants and cultivation? Within a very few years there was wood close to St. Paul's Bay; and it is well known how the Fauna storm. 1 Padre Georgi, however, was not the first who suggested that the Apostle was wrecked on Melida in the Adriatic. We find this mistaken theory in a Byzantine writer of the tenth century. [Very recently the same view has been advocated, but quite inconclusively, in Mr. Neale's Ecclesiological notes on Dalmatia, 1861.] 2 Mr. Smith has effectually disposed of all Bryant's arguments, if such they can be called. See especially his Dissertation on the island Melita. Among those who have adopted Bryant's view, we have referred by name only to Falconer. 3 Ovid, for instance, and Horace. Thucydides speaks of the Adriatic Sea in the same way. We should also bear in mind the shipwreck of Josephus, which took place in "Adria." Some (e. g., Mr. Sharpe, the author of the History of Egypt) have identified the two shipwrecks; but it is difficult to harmonize the narratives. 5 Even with charts he might have a difficulty in recognizing a part of the coast which he had never seen before. And we must recollect that the ancient mariner had no charts. 6 xxviii. 1. 7 See above, p. 717, n. 4. See above, note on the population of Malta. Sir C. Penrose adds a circumstance which it is important to take into account in considering this question, viz. that, in the time of the Knights, the bulk of the population was at the east end of the island, and that the neighborhood of St. Paul's Bay was separated off by a line of fortification built for fear of descents from Barbary cruisers. • This statement rests on the authority of an English resident on the island. 1 LAP. M to en been can we of any country varies with the vegetation. An argument has ev built on the supposed fact that the disease of Publius is unknow in the island. To this it is sufficient to reply by a simple denial. Nor close this rapid survey of objections without noticing the insuperable difficulties which lie against the hypothesis of the Venetian Ma, leda, from the impossibility of reaching it, except by a miracle, under the above hr related circumstances of weather, from the disagreement of its soundings with what is required by the narrative of the shipwreck, and from the inconsistency of its position with what is related of the subsequent voyage." - qof To this part of the voyage we must now proceed. After three months they sailed again for Italy in a ship called the Castor and Poilux. Syracuse was in their track, and the ship put into that famous harbor, and staid there three days. Thus St. Paul was in a great historic city of the West, after spending much time in those of greatest note in the East. We are able to associate the Apostle of the Gentiles and the thoughts of Christianity with the scenes of that disastrous expedition which closed the progress of the Athenians towards our part of Europe, and with those Punic Wars, which ended in bringing Africa under the yoke of Rome. 1 Some instances are given by Mr. Smith. 2 It happens that the writer once spent an anxious night in Malta with a fellow-traveller, who was suffering precisely in the same way. 8 "If Euroclydon blew in such a direction as to make the pilots afraid of being driven on the quicksands (and there were no such dangers but to the south-west of them), how could it be supposed that they could be driven north towards the Adriatic? In truth, it is very difficult for a well-appointed ship of modern days to get from Crete into and up the Adriatic at the season named in the narrative, the north winds being then prevalent and strong. We find the ship certainly driven from the south coast of Crete, from the Fair Havens towards Clauda (now Gozzi), on the southwest; and during the fourteen-days' continuance of the gale, we are never told that Euroclydon ceased to blow; and with either a Gregalia or Levanter blowing hard, St. Paul's ship could not possibly have proceeded up the Adriatic."-Penrose, MS. He says again : 'How is it possible that a ship at that time, and so circumstanced, could have got up the difficult navigation of the Adriatic? To have drifted up the Adriatic to the island of Melita or Melida, in the requisite curve, and to have passed so many islands and other dangers in the route, would, humanly speaking, have been impossible. The distance from Clauda to this Melita is not less than 780 geographical miles, and the wind must have long been from the south to make this voyage in fourteen days. Now, from Clauda to Malta, there is not any one danger in a direct line, and we see that the distance and direction of drift will both agree." This is clearly shown on the Austrian chart of that part of the Adriatic. 5 From the Adriatic Melida it would have been more natural to have gone to Brundusium or Ancona, and thence by land to Rome; and, even in going by sea, Syracuse would have been out of the course, whereas it is in the direct track from Malta. 6 It is natural to assume that such was its name, if such was its "sign," i. e. the sculptured or painted figures at the prow. It was natural to dedicate ships to the Dioscuri, who were the hero-patrons of sailors. They were supposed to appear in those lights which are called by modern sailors the fires of St. Elmo; and in art they are represented as stars. See below on the coins of Rhegium. We are not told whether St. Paul was permitted to go on shore at Syracuse; but from the courtesy shown him by Julius, it is probable that this permission was not refused. If he landed, he would doubtless find Jews and Jewish proselytes in abundance, in so great a mercantile emporium; and would announce to them the Glad Tidings which he was commissioned to proclaim" to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile." Hence we may without difficulty give credit to the local tradition, which regards St. Paul as the first founder of the Sicilian church. Sailing out of that beautiful land-locked basin, and past Ortygia, once an island, but then united in one continuous town with the buildings under the ridge of Epipolæ, the ship which carried St. Paul to Rome shaped her course northwards towards the straits of Messina. The weather was not favorable at first: they were compelled to take an indirect course, and they put into Rhegium, a city whose patron divinities were, by a curious coincidence, the same hero-protectors of seafaring men, "the Great Twin Brethren," to whom the ship itself was dedicated." Here they remained one day (ver. 13), evidently waiting for a fair wind to take them through the Faro; for the springing-up of a wind from the south is expressly mentioned in the following words. This wind would be favorable, not only for carrying the ship through the straits, but for all the remainder of the voyage. If the vessel was single-masted,' with one large square-sail, this wind was the best that could blow for to such a vessel the most advantageous point of sailing is to run right before the wind; and Puteoli lies nearly due north from Rhegium. The distance is about 182 miles. If, then, we assume, in accordance with what has been stated above (p. 683), that she sailed at the rate of seven knots an hour, the passage would be accomplished in about twenty-six hours, which agrees perfectly with the account of St. Luke, who says that, after leaving Rhegium, they came," the next day," to Puteoli. 5 1 The city has now shrunk to its old limit. 2 Mr. Smith's view that the word here (rendered in A. V. "fetching a compass," i. e. "going round") means simply "beating" is more likely to be correct than that of Mr. Lewin, who supposes that "as the wind was westerly, and they were under shelter of the high mountainous range of Ætna on their left, they were obliged to stand out to sea in order to fill their sails, and so come to Rhegium by a circuitous sweep." He adds in a note, that he "was informed by a friend that when he made the voyage from Syracuse to Rhegium, the vessel in which he sailed took a similar circuit for a similar reason." Macaulay's Lays of Rome (Battle of Lake Regillus). One of these coins, exhibiting the heads of the twin-divinities with the stars, is given at the end of the chapter. ♦ We cannot assume this to have been the case, but it is highly probable. See above. We may refer here to the representation of the harbor of Ostia on the coin of Nero, given below, p. 743. It will be observed that all the ships in the harbor are single-masted. 5 Smith, p. 180. 6 We cannot agree with the N. Brit. Reviewer in doubting the correctness of Mr Smith's conclusion on this point. 1 been Before the close of the first day they would see on the left the cone and smoke of Stromboli, the nearest of the Liparian islands. the the course of the night they would have neared that projecting part the mainland, which forms the southern limit of the bay osuf Salerno. Sailing across the wide opening of this gulf, they would, in ale few hours,, enter that other bay, the bay of Naples, in the northern pa thrt of which Puteoli was situated. No long description need be given f of that bay, which has been made familiar, by every kind of illustration, even to those who have never seen it. Its south-eastern limit is the proofmontory of Minerva, with the island of Capreæ opposite, which is so associated with the memory of Tiberius, that its cliffs still seem to rise from the blue waters as a monument of hideous vice in the midst of the faires t scenes of nature. The opposite boundary was the promontory of Misenum, where one of the imperial fleets 2 lay at anchor under the shelter of the islands of Ischia and Procida. In the intermediate space the Campanian coast curves round in the loveliest forms, with Vesuvius as the prominent feature of the view. But here one difference must be marked between St. Paul's day and our own. The angry neighbor of Naples was not then an unsleeping volcano, but a green and sunny background to the bay, with its westward slope covered with vines.❜ No one could have suspected that the time was so near, when the admiral of the fleet at Misenum would be lost in its fiery eruption; and little did the Apostle dream, when he looked from the vessel's deck across the bay to the right, that a ruin, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, hung over the fair cities at the base of the mountain, and that the Jewish princess, who had so lately conversed with him in his prison at Cæsarea, would find her tomb in that ruin, with the child she had borne to Felix." By this time the vessel was well within the island of Capreæ and the promontory of Minerva, and the idlers of Puteoli were already crowding to the pier to watch the arrival of the Alexandrian corn-ship; so we may safely infer from a vivid and descriptive letter preserved among the corre spondence of the philosopher Seneca. He say that all ships, on rounding into the bay within the above-mentioned island and promontory, were obliged to strike their topsails, with the exception of the Alexandrian corn-vessels, which were thus easily recognized as soon as they hove in 1 See the Sailing Directions, 129–133, with the Admiralty charts, for the appearance of the coast between Cape Spartivento (Pr. Palinurum) and Cape Campanella (Pr. Minervæ). 2 The fleet of the "Upper Sea was stationed at Ravenna, of the "Lower" at Mise num. 8 So it is described by Martial and others. Strabo describes the mountain as very fertile at its base, though its summi was barren, and full of apertures, which showed the traces of earlier volcanic action. 4 See the younger Pliny's description of his uncle's death, Ep. vi. 16. Josephus. See above, p. 652. |