o Rome. The Epistle to the
Romans follows the First Epistle to the Corinthians by not more than a
year, and it finds Prisca and Aquila established at Rome, with a church
meeting at their house. Probably they had been St. Paul's informants
as to affairs among the Roman Christians. A good many years
afterwards, when St. Paul was writing his Second Epistle to Timothy[4],
we hear of them again at Ephesus. So much travelling as we find in
their life was not unusual in the Roman empire, and perhaps least of
all among the Jews.

The fact that Priscilla is generally mentioned before her husband, both
by St. Paul and St. Luke[5], as if she were more important, combined
with (1) a tradition which connects her with the {194} _titulus_ (or
parish-church) _Priscae_ at Rome, (2) evidence connecting the
_Coemeterium Priscillae_ with the Acilian gens,--has led some scholars
to believe that Priscilla was a noble Roman lady married to a Jewish
husband. But the evidence is not cogent, and it is more likely that
both she and her husband owed their Roman names to being freedmen[6].
It was probably her prominence among the Christians which led to her
name preceding that of her husband. We need only think of Phoebe and
Priscilla to understand how influential women were in the earliest
Christian churches.

'The church (which met) at their house' is a significant phrase[7].
The wealthier Christians, or those whose houses were commodious, turned
them into churches, where the neighbouring Christians met for worship,
love feast and eucharist. Several of the oldest churches {195} in Rome
grew in this manner out of private houses.

2. St. Paul's brief characterizations of individuals are full of
personal memory and tenderness--'my beloved, who is the firstfruits of
Asia unto Christ[8],' 'who bestowed much labour on you,' 'my kinsmen
(i.e. Jews) and fellow prisoners (on some occasion which we cannot fix,
but which St. Paul remembers), who also were in Christ before me,' 'our
fellow worker,' 'the man approved in Christ,' who has been tried and
found not wanting, 'his mother and mine.' St. Paul, notwithstanding
his wide ecclesiastical plans and theological labours, as he thought no
pains too much to bestow on the details of his scheme for collecting
Gentile money for the needs of poor Jews, so also never lets great
designs obscure the memory of persons and their intricate relations to
himself.

3. Andronicus and Junias (or junianus) are