Acts 23:24

Acts 23:24. And bring him safe unto Felix the governor. The career of this powerful and unprincipled man, who, owing to his meeting with the despised Jew Paul, has obtained a conspicuous niche in history, is principally interesting to us as affording a good instance of the way in which high position and great dignity were acquired under the rule of the Cæsars in the first and second centuries of the Christian era. Felix and his brother Pallas were originally slaves, and then freedmen in the house of a noble Roman lady, Antonia, mother of the Emperor Claudius. Pallas became the favourite and subsequently minister of the emperor. He procured for his brother Felix the important post of procurator of Judæa about A.D. 52. The historian Tacitus writes of him as one who, trusting to his brother's powerful influence at court, knew he could commit any wrong with impunity. He was notoriously avaricious, cruel, and licentious, but withal a man of great energy and talent, wielding, however, as Tacitus tells us, ‘the power of a tyrant with the temper of a slave.' According to Josephus, he was one of the most corrupt and oppressive governors ever despatched from Rome to rule over Judæa. Suetonius, in his history of Claudius, mentions this Roman official as the ‘husband (in succession) of three queens:' (1) Drusilla, the daughter of Juba, king of Mauritania, and Selene, the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra. (2) Another princess of the same name Drusilla the daughter of Herod Agrippa I., and sister of Herod Agrippa II.; she left her first husband Azizus, king of Emesa, to marry Felix. The name of the third royal lady who married this Roman is unknown.

Felix reigned over Judæa some seven or eight years until he was recalled by Nero, who replaced him by Festus, A.D. 60. He owed his deposition to the fall of his brother Pallas, who was subsequently put to death, A.D. 63.