Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 57:2 (NA 2006)
Article: Rehabilitating Gallio And His Judgement In Acts 18:14-15
Author: Bruce W. Winter

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TynBull 57:2 (2006) p. 291

Rehabilitating Gallio And His Judgement In Acts 18:14-15

Bruce W. Winter

Summary

By first-century Graeco-Roman standards, a recent assessment of Gallio – a Roman senator, proconsul and consul of Rome – would have been seen as something of a damnatio that resulted in the dismissal of his achievements and the formal disfiguring of his name from the imperial inscription that bears it in Delphi. However, a re-examination of the evidence of ancient witnesses comes to a somewhat different conclusion about this important Roman senator. Such testimonies would confirm Luke’s presentation of this legally competent proconsul who made a landmark judgement under Roman law on the status of the early Christian movement.

1. Introduction

It has been said of Gallio that he deserted his post as proconsul of Achaea before his tenure had expired because he was ‘a fussy hypochondriac’ – a conclusion said to be ‘confirmed by Pliny [the Elder]’s report’.1 His Achaean appointment has thereby been judged a ‘failure’.2 Yet the Emperor Claudius, in an official letter to Delphi, commended Gallio for his diligence in providing a report for the resettling of that ancient cultic centre and owned him officially as ‘my friend and proconsul’ of Achaea. 3

When governors of provinces returned to Rome, charges could be laid against them and, if proven, they would suffer damnatio and their

TynBull 57:2 (2006) p. 292

names defaced from official inscriptions.4 The name of Gallio was preserved in the Delphi inscription.

After this older brother of Seneca the Younger left Corinth, he held the prestigious office of suffect consul of Rome. However, even the significance of that achievement, while acknowledged, is undermined: ‘His [Gallio’s] failure in Achaia forgotten, he was named Consul [of Rome] in AD 59.’5

There is a record of Gallio as Nero’s official herald announcing the emperor’s appearance in the theatre, but this role is described somewhat pejoratively in canine terms as that of a ‘barker’. 6His reaction in the Senate in Rome, when he became terrified for his own safety following his younger brother’s death in the purge of Nero, is used only to confirm further negative views of this man.

Even the assessment of Gallio by his distinguished brother, w...

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