Acts 19:30

(30) When Paul would have entered in . . .—We almost see the impetuous zeal which urged the Apostle not to leave his companions to bear the brunt of the attack alone, and the anxious fear which made his friends eager to prevent a step which would probably endanger his own life without helping his friends. He refers probably to this when he speaks of having, as far as man was concerned, “fought with beasts at Ephesus” (1 Corinthians 15:32); not that there was any actual danger of martyrdom in that form, but that the multitude in their fanatic rage presented as formidable an ordeal. So Ignatius (Ep. ad Rom. c. 3) speaks of himself as “fighting with wild beasts” (using the same word as St. Paul), and describes the soldiers who kept guard over him in his journey from Antioch to Rome as the “ten leopards” who were his companions.