Acts 18:12

Acts 18:12. And when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia. The Greek verb rendered ‘was the deputy,' should be translated ‘was the proconsul.' Gloag remarks that the Roman province of Achaia was almost of the same extent with the modern kingdom of Greece. It included the Peloponnesus and the rest of Greece proper; whereas Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly, and part of Illyria formed the province of Macedonia. These provinces were transferred from the government of the senate to that of the emperor, and vice versa, more than once. The writer of the ‘Acts,' however, with his usual scrupulous historical accuracy, speaks of the governor of the province of Achaia as proconsul. Suetonius expressly mentions that Claudius the emperor gave up to the senate the provinces of Achaia and Macedonia, which would account for the governor being styled proconsul, the title of the senate's official. The proconsul had been adopted by the rhetorician L. Junius Gallio, whose name he took, and was generally known as Junius Annæus Gallio, brother of Seneca, the famous philosopher and tutor of Nero. Gallio was one of the marked men of that age. He is mentioned by Tacitus, Statius, Seneca, and others. He appears to have been a cultivated and polished scholar, popular, and even beloved. Seneca writes of him with the tenderest affection: ‘My brother Gallio, whom every one loves too little, even he who loves him most.' Statius gives him a beautiful but untranslateable epithet when he calls him ‘dulcis Gallio.' Renan (St. Paul), writing of this Roman official, well sums up contemporary history in his words: ‘C'était un bel esprit et une âme noble, un ami des poêtes et des écrivains célèbres. Tous ceux qui le connaissaient l'adoraient.... Il semble que ce fut sa haute culture hellenique qui le fit choisir, sous le lettré Claude pour l'administration d'une Province (Achaia) que tous les gouvernements un peu éclairés entouraient d'attentions délicates.'

The Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul. It is not stated what circumstances directly led up to this attack on Paul. It has been suggested that the change of government on the arrival of Gallio encouraged the Jewish party, ever bitterly hostile to their old leader, to bring about his arrest. It was no doubt, however, devised at the suggestion of his sleepless enemies in the Holy Land, who watched continually his movements and his work.

And brought him to the judgment-seat. It was the custom of the provincial governors of the Empire to hold their courts on certain fixed days of the week. These sittings were commonly held in the Agora or market-place. The ‘judgment seat' (τὸ βῆμα), mentioned again twice (see Acts 18:16-17), was of two kinds (1) fixed in some public place; or (2) moveable and taken about by the magistrate, to be set up in whatever spot he might wish to sit.