Aquila
10 CE · Rome
Aquila was a Jewish tentmaker from Pontus, on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor. With his wife Priscilla (Prisca) he became one of Paul's closest partners. Acts says the couple had recently come from Italy because the emperor Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome (Acts 18:2). The Roman historian Suetonius records that Claudius expelled from Rome Jews who were constantly rioting 'at the instigation of Chrestus', a notice most scholars connect with Acts 18:2. In Corinth, Paul lived and worked with Aquila and Priscilla, since they shared the same trade (Acts 18:3). The couple went with Paul to Ephesus and stayed there. They hosted a house church and gave the Alexandrian preacher Apollos fuller instruction (Acts 18:18-26; 1 Corinthians 16:19). Paul's letter to the Romans, usually dated c. 57, greets the pair and their house church, apparently back in Rome. Paul thanks them for having 'laid down their own necks' for his life (Romans 16:3-5). Aquila never appears in the New Testament without his wife, who is often named first.
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RomeרומאItaly
What they did here
Aquila, 'a man of Pontus by race', had lived in Italy with Priscilla until Claudius ordered the Jews out of Rome (Acts 18:2). Suetonius (Claudius 25.4) records an expulsion of Jews from Rome under Claudius, a notice most scholars connect with Acts 18:2; Orosius dates it to 49 CE.
Rome in this era
Under the Julio-Claudian and Flavian emperors Rome was the capital of a pagan empire with an early Christian community. According to Acts, the apostle Paul arrived there as a prisoner around 60 CE; Christian tradition holds that both Peter and Paul were martyred under Nero, c. 64-68 CE.
About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Aquila’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
- Parthenius of Nicaea· Rome
- Didymus Alexandrinus· Rome
- Strabo· Rome
- Seneca the Elder· Rome
- Ovid· Rome
- Tiberius· Rome
- Celsus· Rome
- Philo of Alexandria· Rome
- Valerius Maximus· Rome
- Phaedrus· Rome
- Seneca, Lucius Annaeus· Rome
- Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus· Rome
- Curtius Rufus, Quintus· Rome
- Pliny, the Elder· Rome
- Silius Italicus, Tiberius Catius· Rome
- Petronius Arbiter· Rome
- Berenice· Rome
- Musonius Rufus· Rome
In the same tradition
Peter the Apostle, Mary Magdalene, Paul the Apostle, Priscilla, Silas, Apollos, Timothy, Anacletus, Bishop of Rome, Linus, Bishop of Rome, Mark the Evangelist, Luke the Evangelist
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Aquila’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.