Acts 16:37

37. Beaten us… Romans The memorable oratory of Cicero against Verres has universally diffused the knowledge of the fact that the exclamation! “I am a Roman citizen!” exempted the legal utterer from stripes, the punishment of slaves. By the Porcian law the body of a Roman citizen was sacred from stripes or the power of a lictor.

Uncondemned A second violation of law in the same act. And this fact of their allowing of no trial and no hearing deprived them of all plea of ignorance of Paul’s citizenship. It is a difficult question to decide how Paul, being a Jew, became a Roman; that is, endowed with the rights of a citizen of Rome. This right could at some periods be purchased, and some Jews did purchase it on account of its great protective convenience, but Paul “was freeborn,” Acts 22:27-28. Nor did it arise from his being a Tarsean, for in spite of that known fact (Acts 21:39) the chief captain was ready to scourge him. Tarsus was, by favour of Augustus, “a free city;” that is, under allegiance to Rome it was allowed to choose its own magistrates, pass its own laws, and govern itself; yet this did not endow its inhabitants individually with the immunities of a Roman citizen. His father was such a citizen, it may be, by purchase, or by some public service. There, indeed, is a third supposition. A slave, if emancipated within the city of Rome, became thereby a citizen. Now, as it happens, the Roman general, Cassius, offended at the hostility of Tarsus, sold a large number of the inhabitants into slavery at Rome, and of these Paul’s father may have been one. When Cassius was conquered at Philippi the enslaved Tarsians were emancipated, and thus Paul’s father may have been enfranchised, and Paul “free-born.”