Caesar, and Brutus and Cassius, and perhaps those between this Caesar and Antony, received the grant of the privileges of a Roman citizen. Whence he concludes that Paul must have been of an opulent family. These opinions of Grotius have received the approval of other eminent commentators. These notions however, must be rejected as unsatisfactory; because, though some writers have but slightly alluded to Tarsus as a free city, yet Dio Chrysostom, (in Tarsica posteriore,) has enlarged upon it in a tone of high declamation. "Yours, men of Tarsus, was the fortune to be first in this nation,—not only because you dwell in the greatest city of Cilicia, and one which was a metropolis from the beginning,—but also because the second Caesar was remarkably well-disposed and gracious towards you. For, the misfortunes which befell the city in his cause, deservedly secured to you his kind regard, and led him to make his benefits to you as conspicuous as the calamities brought upon you for his sake. Therefore did Augustus confer on you everything that a man could on friends and companions, with a view to outdo those who had shown him so great good-*will,—your land, laws, honors, the right of the river and of the neighboring sea." On which words Heinsius observes in comment, that by land is doubtless meant that he secured to them their own territory, free and undisturbed. By laws are meant such as relate to the liberty usually granted to free towns. Honor plainly refers to the right of citizenship, as the most exalted he could offer. The point then seems to be established, if this interpretation holds good, and it is evidently a rational one. For when he had made up his mind to grant high favors to a city, in return for such great merits, why, when it was in his power, should Augustus fail to grant it the rights of Roman citizenship, which certainly had been often granted to other cities on much slighter grounds? It would be strange indeed, if among the exalted honors which Dio proclaims, that should not have been included. This appears to be the drift, not only of Dio's remarks, but also of Paul's, who offers no other proof of his being a Roman citizen, than that he was a Tarsan, and says nothing of it as a special immunity of his own family, although some such explanation would otherwise have been necessary to gain credit to his assertion. Whence it is concluded that it would be rash to pretend, contrary to all historical testimony, any peculiar merits of the ancestors of Paul, towards the Romans, which caused so great an honor to be conferred on a Jewish family."
But from all these ample and grandiloquent statements of Dio Chrysostom, it by no means follows that Tarsus had the privilege of Roman citizenship; and the conclusion of the learned Witsius seems highly illogical. The very fact, that while Dio was panegyrizing Tarsus in these high terms, and recounting all the favors which imperial beneficence had showered upon it, he yet did not mention among these minutiae, the privilege of citizenship, is quite conclusive against this view; for he would not, when thus seeking for all the particulars of its eminence, have omitted the greatest honor and advantage which could be conferred on any city by a Roman emperor, nor have left it vaguely to be inferred. Besides, there are passages in the Acts of the Apostles which seem to be opposed to the view, that Tarsus was thus privileged. In Acts xxi. 39, Paul is represented as distinctly stating to the tribune, that he was "a citizen of Tarsus;" yet in xxii. 24, 25, it is said, that the tribune was about proceeding, without scruple, to punish Paul with stripes, and was very much surprised indeed, to learn that he was a Roman citizen, and evidently had no idea that a citizen of Tarsus was, as a matter of course, endowed with Roman citizenship;—a fact, however, with which a high Roman officer must have been acquainted, for there were few cities thus privileged, and Tarsus was a very eminent city in a province adjoining Palestine, and not far from the capital of Judea. And the subsequent passages of chap. xxii. represent him as very slow indeed to believe it, after Paul's distinct assertion.
Hemsen is very clear and satisfactory on this point, and presents the argument in a fair light. See his note in his "Apostel Paulus" on pp. 1, 2. He refers also to a work not otherwise known here;—John Ortwin Westenberg's "Dissert. de jurisp. Paul. Apost." Kuinoel in Act. Apost. xvi. 37. discusses the question of citizenship.
"It ought not to seem very strange, that the ancestors of Paul should have settled in Cilicia, rather than in the land of Israel. For although Cyrus gave the whole people of God an opportunity of returning to their own country, yet many from each tribe preferred the new country, in which they had been born and bred, to the old one, of which they had lost the remembrance. Hence an immense multitude of Jews might be found in almost all the dominions of the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Parthians; as alluded to in Acts ii. 9, 10. But there were also other occasions and
