Acts 25:21

Acts 25:21. But when Paul had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of Augustus, I commanded him to be kept till I might send him to Cæsar. There is evidently in Festus' words an under-current of a not unnatural displeasure at the appeal to Cæsar. He was not able to refuse permission to the ‘citizen' Paul to appeal; still he felt it was somewhat of a slight thrown upon him, Festus, that a Roman citizen should prefer the imperial tribunal at Rome to his own. He could not help feeling, too, that it was his proposition to remove the trial to Jerusalem which had moved the prisoner to take this step. The Greek word translated ‘Augustus' (Σεβαστου ͂) is an adjective signifying venerable (venerandus), and is the Greek equivalent for Augustus a title of pre-eminent honour and dignity first given by the Roman senate to Octavianus (see Suetonius, Augustus). It is apparently connected with ‘augur,' and possesses a religious signification. It soon became the royal title assumed by rather than conferred on, the emperors. Cæsar, if we examine the true meaning of the term, was in the first instance the family name answering to Plantagenet, Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, though it very soon, like Ptolemy in the royal Egyptian line, became a title of the chief magistrate of the Empire. Later in the story of Rome, Augustus was assumed as the designation of the older and superior; Cæsar, that of the younger and subordinate emperor. It is curious that of these two world-famous titles, while the higher, ‘Augustus,' now belongs to the storied past, the lower and less distinguished has been adopted not by the Roman, but, singularly enough, by the Teutonic and Slavonic peoples, as the designation of their supreme magistrate, under the very slightly altered ‘Kaiser' and ‘Czar.' Plumptre calls attention to the memory of this name or title ‘Augustus' being perpetuated in the month August, and in the names of the cities of Augsburg and Sebastopol.

I commanded him to be kept till I might tend him to Cæear. Thus intimating that he was only waiting for a fit opportunity to send the prisoner under a proper escort to Rome.