The propriety of the title “proconsul” is in this still more critical.  For the province of Achaia, after passing from the senate to the emperor, had been restored again by the emperor Claudius to the senate (and consequently its government had become proconsular) only six or seven years before the time in which this transaction is said to have taken place. (Suet. in Claud. c. xxv.  Dio, lib. lxi.) And what confines with strictness the appellation to the time is, that Achaia under the following reign ceased to be a Roman province at all.

Ix. [p. 152.] It appears, as well from the general constitution of a Roman province, as from what Josephus delivers concerning the state of Judea in particular, (Antiq. lib. xx. c. 8, sect. 5; c. 1, sect. 2.) that the power of life and death resided exclusively in the Roman governor; but that the Jews, nevertheless, had magistrates and a council, invested with a subordinate and municipal authority.  This economy is discerned in every part of the Gospel narrative of our Saviour’s crucifixion.

X. [p. 203.] Acts ix. 31.  “Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria.”

This rest synchronises with the attempt of Caligula to place his statue in the temple of Jerusalem; the threat of which outrage produced amongst the Jews a consternation that, for a season, diverted their attention from every other object. (Joseph. de Bell lib.  Xi. c. 13, sect. 1, 3, 4.)

Xi. [p. 218.] Acts xxi. 30.  “And they took Paul, and drew him out of the temple; and forthwith the doors were shut.  And as they went about to kill him, tidings came to the chief captain of the band that all Jerusalem was in an uproar.  Then the chief captain came near, and took him and commanded him to be bound with two chains, and demanded who he was, and what he had done; and some cried one thing, and some another, among the multitude:  and, when he could not know the certainty for the tumult, he commanded him to be carried into the castle.  And when he came upon the stairs, so it was, that he was borne of the soldiers for the violence of the people.”

In this quotation we have the band of Roman soldiers at Jerusalem, their office (to suppress tumults), the castle, the stairs, both, as it should seem, adjoining to the temple.  Let us inquire whether we can find these particulars in any other record of that age and place.

Joseph. de.  Ball. lib. v. e. 5, sect. 8.  “Antonia was situated at the angle of the western and northern porticoes of the outer temple.  It was built upon a rock fifty cubits high, steep on all sides.—­On that side where it joined to the porticoes of the temple, there were stairs reaching to each portico, by which the guard descended; for there was always lodged here a Roman legion; and posting themselves in their armour in several places in the porticoes, they kept a watch on the people on the feast-days to prevent all disorders; for as the temple was a guard to the city, so was Antonia to the temple.”