Acts 28:15

15. Brethren heard of us To the Church at Rome, Paul had three years previous addressed the greatest of his epistles. To all appearance it was eminently a Pauline Church. They heard the sudden news that the apostle of the Gentiles, adorned with fetters gloriously earned in the cause of the blessed Jesus, was on his way within a hundred miles or more of Rome, we might well anticipate, with rare delight.

Appii Forum About forty miles from Rome. Leaving Capua, on arriving at the celebrated Pomptine Marshes Julius would have his choice to keep the Appian Way in its circuitous route around the Marshes, or take the canal across in a boat dragged by mules. Both routes united at Appii Forum. The Roman Christians not knowing (any better than we) which of the two routes the apostle would take, met him at the junction at Appii Forum. Appii Forum, or Appius’ Market, was probably a cluster of houses formed at the junction originally, around a station where articles were retailed to travellers.

Three Taverns A tavern, taberna, (derived from trabs, a plank,) was primitively a wooden hut, derivatively not an inn, but rather a grocery, a restaurant, “a retail shop where all sorts of eatables and drinkables were kept.”

Took courage Christian sympathy quickened the heart of our genial apostle. It is very possible that many if not all this little band of Roman Christians were within three or four years driven into exile or cruelly murdered by the execrable Nero. On the night of July 19, A.D. 64, a fire burst out in Rome which continued a week, and laid nearly one quarter of the city in ashes. Popular opinion fixed the charge of originating the conflagration on Nero himself. To exculpate himself from this suspicion Nero laid the charge upon the Christians of Rome, and forthwith commenced a series of cruelties which appalled that and every other age. From causes mentioned in our note on Acts 28:22, the Christians were now the object of pagan hatred. Esteeming them as helpless victims, and hoping that popular hatred would sustain his cruelty, Nero inflicted tortures which even a pagan historian, Tacitus, records with abhorrence. Of those who refused to call the emperor Lord, to swear by his name, to offer sacrifices to his image and to the heathen deities, “some,” says Tacitus, “were disguised in the skins of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs, some were crucified, and others were wrapped in pitched shirts by night that they might serve as lights to illuminate the night.” No longer protected by Roman power, the Church, condemned as holding an unlawful religion, was exposed both to the violence of the populace and the severity of the magistrate.