Cesar's household

This phrase occurs with a mark of emphasis in the salutations sent from St. Paul's friends at Rome to the Church at Philippi, where we read, 'All the saints salute you, especvally they that are of CcEsar's household {iiiXiara ii ol (k TTii Kafffopos oUlas, Ph 4'-''). The dumus or {amilia Cccsaris included the whole imperial house- lold, and extended to the attendants of the emperor in the provinces as well as at Rome. Li^htfoot gives a list of some of these, from which it is evident that the phrase contains no indication of the rank of the persons to whom it refers. They may have been courtiers of high position ; the execution of Titus Flarius Clemens, a man of consular rank and cousin to the emperor, and the banishment of his wife Flavia Domitilla, the emperor's niece, and her daughter Pontia, by iJomitian, for the vague crimes, contemtissinue inertia (Suet. c. 15), atheism (d^crfri)?), and in- clination to Jewish cu.stoms (Dion. Cass. Ixvii. 14), have suggested the probable opinion that these people were Christians. Still, most probably in the time of St. Paul the Christian members oi the iinperiiil household were slaves, or freedmen of humble position. The apostle's association with the soldiers who guarded him may have led to the intro<luction of the gospel to the palace attendants, although the statement that the prisoners were put under the Prsetorian guard (Ac 28" AV) is absent from the best MSS. The imperial house- hold must have constituted so large a proportion of the population of Rome that there is nothing sur- prismg in the fact that some of its members came into contact with Christian teachers. The interest- ing fact is that converts were won from so frightful a circle of dissoluteness as the court of Nero (Suetonius, Nero, 28, 29). The names of a number of the imperial attendants of this period having been recovered from sepulchral monuments among the columbaria in the neighbourhood of the Appian Way, Lightfoot pointed out the identity of some of these names with several that occur in the list of salutations in Ro 16, viz. Ainplias, Urbanus, Stachys, Apelles, Narcis.sus, Trj'phicna, Tryphosa, PatroDas (Patrobius), Philologus, Julia (Julius). The probability that the last chapter of Ro is really part of an Ep. to the Ephesians deprives these coincidences of^ their supposed value. Most of the names are not uncommon. LrriRATURR. — I.ighlfoot, PhUippiant, n. on 'Cassar's HouM. hold' ; Conybearo and Howson, St. Faul, ch. xxvi. ; Kanuiay, St. Paul th» Trav. p. 863 : Wcizsackcr, Avott. Age (Eng tr.'), U 132. W. V. AdENE\-. C;ESAREA (Kai<rapf/o), Ac 10'" 21» 2.3=>- ».— The city N. of .lall'a, on the seashore, orig. called Strato's Tower, rebuilt by Herod the Great, the capital of Judaa under the Procurators, and where St. Paul was imprisoned. It was famous for its port, which Josephus compares with the Pira'us, though the latter was very much larger [Ant. XV. ix. 0). The present ruins uulude the walls of the ancient city, aii<l within tlicm tliose of a much smaller town OI the twelfth cent., with walls rebuilt in the thirteenth by St. Louis. The cathedral, of whicli vol.. 1, — 22 only foundations remain, appears to stand on the site of the temple raised by Herod to Augustus (Jos. Ant. XV. ix. 6; Wars, I. xxi. 7). On the S., outside the mediasval town, are ruins apparently of a large theatre close to the shore. On the E. is a cursus, with a fine goal of granite, now overthrown. Two aqueducts from Carmel brought the waters of the Zerka, or Crocodile River, to the city. They are Rom. work, with round arches, running over the swamps, and a tunnel through the dill's, with rock- cut staircases descending in wells. A few Bosnian colonists have houses in the ruins. Cresarea was a bishopric from the fourth to the thirteenth cent. A.D., of which the most celebrated bishop wa* Eusebius. In NT times it had a mixed population, and conflicts between the Jews and their fellow- citizens were frequent. On the outbreak of the great war, the Jewish population was massacred (Jos. Wars, II. xviii. 1, vil. viii. 7 ; Schiirer, HJP II. i. 86 f.). It was also the scene of a Moslem massacre when taken by the Crusaders in A. D. 1101. For full account, and plans of the ruins, see SWP, vol. ii. sheet X. See also Neubauer, G6og. Talm. s.v. C. R. CONDER.