Acts 22:28

πολλοῦ κεφ., cf. LXX, Lev. 5:24 (Leviticus 6:4), Numbers 5:7; Jos., Ant., xii., 2, 3 (used by Plato of capital (caput) as opposed to interest). Mr. Page compares the making of baronets by James 1. as a means of filling the exchequer. τὴν πολιτείαν ταύτην : “this citizenship,” R.V., jus civitatis, cf. 3Ma 3:21; 3Ma 3:23, so in classical Greek. Probably A.V. renders “freedom” quite as we might speak of the freedom of the city being conferred upon any one. On the advantages of the rights of Roman citizenship see Schürer, div. ii., vol. ii., pp. 277, 278, E.T., and “Citizenship,” Hastings' B.D. ἐκτησάμην : Dio Cassius, lx., 17, tells us how Messalina the wife of Claudius and the freedmen sold the Roman citizenship, and how at one time it might be purchased for one or two cracked drinking-cups (see passage in full in Wetstein, and also Cic., Ad Fam., xii., 36). Very probably the Chiliarch was a Greek, Lysias, Acts 23:26, who had taken the Roman name Claudius on his purchase of the citizenship under the emperor of that name. ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ γεγέννημαι : “but I am a Roman even from birth”: “item breviter et cum dignitate,” Blass. St. Paul's citizenship of Tarsus did not make him a Roman citizen, otherwise his answer in Acts 21:39 would have been sufficient to have saved him from the present indignity. Tarsus was an urbs libera, not a colonia or municipium, and the distinction made in Acts between the Roman and Tarsian citizenship of Paul is in itself an additional proof of the truthfulness of the narrative. How his father obtained the Roman citizenship we are not told; it may have been by manumission, Philo Leg. ad., 23, or for some service rendered to the state, Jos., Vita, 76, or by purchase, but on this last supposition the contrast here implied would be rendered less forcible. However the right was obtained, it is quite certain that there is nothing strange in St. Paul's enjoyment of it. As early as the first century B.C. there were many thousands of Roman citizens living in Asia Minor; and the doubts raised by Renan and Overbeck are pronounced by Schürer as much too weak in face of the fact that it is precisely in the most trustworthy portion of Acts that the matter is vouched for.