OR SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS OF ROMAN OFFICERS. "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."-MATT. viii. 10. PUBLISHED BY R. B. SEELEY AND W. BURNSIDE : FLEET STREET, LONDON. MDCCCXLI. PREFACE. THERE are circumstances which invest with peculiar interest the character of the Roman centurion, as it is delineated in the Scriptures. Those victorious armies, which during a long protracted warfare had won for themselves a reputation superior to all the troops of the world, were at length, like our own, reposing in comparative peace; and the genius of the nation, for years engrossed with the tumult of military excitement, had found leisure to devote itself to the cultivation of knowledge, and, for a season at least, to the civilization of mankind. The emperor Augustus, satisfied with the extent of his dominions, had limited his ambition to the honourable task of defining, consolidating, and improving the vast countries already be 1 1 Tacitus. Ann. i. 9. neath his sway; and his successors as far as Nero, in which period is comprehended the Gospel history, had equally abandoned the endeavour, if not the desire, of adding to the conquests of their predecessors. The army therefore was distributed throughout the empire; and the legions, which during the career of the first Cæsar, had been engaged in ceaseless activity, were now stationed along the frontiers, and in the principal towns of Italy, and her provinces. But although war was almost at an end, yet the services of the army had by no means ceased to be necessary. On some of the frontiers, nations subdued, but still eager to emancipate themselves, were to be sedulously guarded: large tracts of country were only to be retained by the presence of an armed force; and succours were always to be ready to pour into Italy, should any unforeseen calamity call for their assistance. In Judæa, the scene to which our attention will be directed, tumults, plots, and insurrections, were continually requiring 1 Tacitus Ann. iv. 5. military interference; and the way if he Romans, absolute, but perhaps I her st almost of necessity variable, serta ti 2274 contributed to these incessant product Instead of laying down, and persevering in a certain form of government for the primace from its first subjection; either stairming the monarchy, as they found it, to submitting altogether a viceroy of their own: Selang some generous system adapted to the value of the people, they varied their treatment as the discretion of the emperors, apa Tok entirely depended. Thus in the cave of the first Herod, after having ruled the entry. first by a Roman general, then partly by Jewis procurators, they now established a native as king, with power to nominate his successor. Yet at his death even Augatti vet and t will; 2 and dividing the kingdon has four se trarchies, distributed them according to his own pleasure amongst that monarch's three soca' Again, upon the misbehaviour of one of them, Archelaus, ethnarch of Judæa, Le deposed, and |