Prisca and Aquila

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Aquila and his wife Priscilla are the most prominent couple involved in the first-century expansion of Christianity. They were Paul’s hosts at Corinth (Acts 18:2–3). Subsequently they directed house-churches at Ephesus (1 Corinthians 16:19) and Rome (Romans 16:3–5). Their contacts with Paul and their presence in three of the most important centers of early Christianity—Corinth, Ephesus and Rome—underline their importance in the history of early Christianity.

The couple is mentioned six times in the New Testament, but only twice with Aquila’s name first—once in the form “Aquila and Priscilla” (Acts 18:2) and once as “Aquila and Prisca” (1 Corinthians 16:19). Despite the difference in the woman’s names, there is no question of two wives because Priscilla is the diminutive of Prisca, as Mariette is of Mary in English and Carmencita of Carmen in Spanish. It is significant of Paul’s attitude toward women that he invariably uses the grown-up form, Prisca, whereas in Acts, Luke with equal consistency uses the diminutive, Priscilla, which might be interpreted as a put-down.

In the four other New Testament references to the couple, Priscilla (Acts 18:18, 26) or Prisca (Romans 16:3; 2 Timothy 4:19) is named first. This is most unusual, and the only possible explanation is that she was more important than her husband. In what sense? By secular standards or by specifically Christian criteria?

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If by secular standards, this would mean that she outranked Aquila in terms of social status or independent wealth;¹ if by Christian criteria, this would mean she had been converted first or was more prominent in the life of the Church.² The choice is not easy, but the balance of probability favors the second alternative. The fact that she worked manually with her husband (Acts 18:3) suggests that she neither outranked him in social status nor had independent wealth. A woman of noble birth would not know how to do the heavy needle-and-palm work of tentmakers, nor would her hands be adapted to it, and a woman of independent means would not need to work. Hence the standard of judgment is Christian. The public acknowledgment of Prisca’s prominent role in the Church, implicit in the reversal of the secular form of naming the husband before his wife, underlines how radically egalitarian the Pauline communities were.

In Acts, Luke identifies Aquila as a Jew who had been in Rome before going to Corinth but who originally hailed from Pontus (Acts 18:2), the Roman province on the southern coast of the Black Sea. We know of two others with the same name from that area: a Roman official, Gaius Julius Aquila, who was a contemporary of Paul; and the early second-century A.D. Bible translator (from Hebrew into Greek) Aquila, who became a disciple of Rabbi Akiva.³ Both of these, however, were gentiles who presumably inherited their names.

Our Aquila, although a Jew, could have acquired this Latin name (Aquila means eagle) in any of a number of ways. Military recruits from the provinces were given an arbitrary Latin name on induction.⁴ The sponsor’ name became part of the name of the new Roman citizen. Thus, for example, P. Cornelius Dolabella sponsored for citizenship a 043Sicilian Greek, Demetrios Megas, who in consequence was known as P. Cornelius Megas. Slaves on being freed added the name of their master to their own. Thus Tiro, who had been Marcus Tullius Cicero’s slave-secretary, became Marcus Tullius Tiro. Those who were freed by Roman citizens by that fact alone became Roman citizens.⁵

It is impossible to say with any certitude by what route Aquila (or one of his ancestors) acquired this name, but I prefer a third possibility because it has the additional merit not only of accounting for Prisca’s name but of explaining both how they met and their subsequent lifestyle: They both may have been freed slaves of the same great Roman family.

The evidence confirming this hypothesis is more suggestive than substantiative. The Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome was, the archaeological evidence 044suggests, originally a burial ground of the Acilian family, whose male members bore names like Manius Acilius Glabrio.⁶ Prisca and Priscilla were common names in that family⁷ and are attested by inscriptions in Rome as borne by freed female slaves.⁸ Aquila’s name in Greek appears as Akylas or Akyilas, and the Latin Acilius was sometimes written Aquilius. The last name could easily be transcribed as Akyilas, which then became Akylas. Thus there is the real possibility that Aquila was a freedman of the same family,⁹ because this name too is found in Roman inscriptions as belonging to freed slaves.¹⁰

It is pointless to ask how Aquila got from Pontus to Rome. He may have been brought as a slave. Or as a desperate emigrant, he may have sold himself into slavery. In the first century the tremendous influx of people into the Eternal City from all over the empire, and particularly from the East, gave rise to many problems and much comment. The biting commentary of the early second-century A.D. satirist Juvenal is typical:

“I cannot stomach a Greek-struck Rome. Yet what fraction of these sweepings derives in fact from Greece? For years now Syrian Orontes has poured its sewage into our native Tiber … schoolmaster, rhetorician, surveyor, artist, masseur, diviner, tightrope-walker, magician or quack, your versatile hungry Greekling is all by turns.”¹¹

When Prisca and Aquila got their freedom, they went into business together. This is the most natural interpretation of the plural, “for they were tentmakers” (Acts 18:3).

What need would Rome have of tentmakers? In fact the demand was so great that there was even a Tentmakers Association (collegium tabernaculariorum).¹² Pliny the Elder describes what work they did in a way that answers the question:

“Linen cloths were used in the theatres as awnings, a plan first invented by Quintus Catulus when dedicating the Capitol.¹³ …Next even when there was no display of games Marcellus, the son of Augustus’s sister Octavia, during his period of office as aedile in the eleventh consulship of his uncle, from the first of August onwards affixed awnings of sailcloth over the forum, so that those engaged in lawsuits might resort there under healthier conditions. What a change this was from the stern manners of Cato the ex-censor, who had expressed the view that the forum ought to be paved with sharp pointed stones [to discourage loiterers]. Recently awnings actually of sky blue and spangled with stars have been stretched with ropes even in the emperor Nero’s amphitheatres. Red awnings are used in the inner courts of houses and keep the sun off the moss growing there.”¹⁴

The need for summer awnings in private houses explains where Prisca and Aquila learned their trade. As craftsmen they could expect commissions from other house owners; then they might be lucky enough to be called upon when public work had to be completed at short notice. Shops provided another source of revenue. Juvenal mentions “inscribed linen awnings”¹⁵ that both advertised and protected shops not shaded by a balcony or a second floor projecting out over the sidewalk.

Awnings, however, were not the tentmaker’s only product. On some occasions the inns of Rome proved incapable of handling all those who flocked to the city. Thus in 45 B.C., when Julius Caesar celebrated the defeat of all his enemies by magnificent displays of every sort, the Roman historian Suetonius reported, “Such a throng flocked to all these shows from every quarter that many strangers had to lodge in tents pitched in the streets or along the roads.”¹⁶

Whether such tents were also of linen is an open question. Certainly a distinction must be made between the light linen of summer beach pavilions designed to provide shade without impeding the breeze,¹⁷ and the much stouter linen used as sail-cloth¹⁸ and for hucksters’ booths.¹⁹ The difference in weight and flexibility between the canvas used for the latter purposes and leather is negligible, and the waterproofing of leather is superior. It is doubtful, therefore, that leather tents were used exclusively by the military.²⁰ Wealthy travelers—and there were many moving in and out of Rome—carried tents as insurance in case they should fail to make it to an inn before nightfall and had to sleep in the open.

Since it was to their economic advantage to be able to work all year and in all climates, it must be assumed that tentmakers were equally at home in sewing together strips of leather or different weights of canvas. There is little difference in technique in joining two thicknesses of leather or layers of heavy canvas. It takes an awl to make the hole in a rolled-over canvas seam just as it does in leather, and in both cases the needle must be slipped through before the hole closes. It is but a short step to sewing leather cloaks, belts and gourds, all equipment of the traveler.^a Since skill was more important than strength, women could 045sew as well as men. Inevitably a tentmaker developed muscular shoulders and strong, calloused hands. The stitch was set by a sudden outward jerk of both hands into which the thread bit.²¹ Little wonder that Paul, another tentmaker, could write only with awkward large letters (Galatians 6:11)!

Application and good connections would have given Prisca and Aquila a reasonable living, which they put at risk by becoming Christians. How they were contacted is obscure. Our only hint is the note that they came to Corinth because the emperor “Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome” (Acts 18:2). The allusion is to an event 046recorded by Suetonius: “Claudius expelled from Rome the Jews constantly making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.”²²

The date of this event and what precisely occurred is disputed. I have argued elsewhere that the historical kernel hidden in a number of ancient sources (all slightly inaccurate) is that in 41 A.D. Claudius closed down a Roman synagogue as the result of continuous turmoil centering on the figure of Christ (of which Chrestus is a dialectical variation), and expelled from the city a certain number of Jews.²³ Evidently Christian missionaries, presumably of Jewish extraction, had made some converts in Rome but had also met opposition when they proclaimed Jesus in a synagogue. Neither side desisted, and the row intensified to the point where the Roman authorities were 047obliged to intervene.

How Prisca and Aquila became involved in this turmoil is unclear. It is possible that they supported those who resisted the Christian missionaries, but it is more likely that they took the other side, perhaps too vigorously. They certainly were Christians before they arrived in Corinth: Jewish refugees who had lost everything through the machinations of Christian missionaries in Rome would hardly have given work and shelter in Corinth to the same sort of missionary, namely Paul. Yet Prisca and Aquila did just that, Acts tells us, opened their house to him: “he stayed with them” (Acts 18:3). It is much more probable that Prisca and Aquila took Paul in because they discovered that they shared a common faith.²⁴ Support for this view comes from the fact that they were not converted in Corinth. That honor belonged to members of the household of Stephanas, who were baptized by Paul (1 Corinthians 1:16, 16:15).

The expulsion order barred Prisca and Aquila from Rome, but it did not banish them from Italy. In this respect the sobriety of Suetonius the historian is preferable to the hyperbole of Luke the storyteller. The catastrophe may have cost Prisca and Aquila their capital investment;²⁵ but they had their skill, and their basic tools (awl, needles, thread) were easily portable. They could have worked anywhere in Italy. If they went farther afield, it must have been for a good reason. The simplest conjecture is that Aquila had become nostalgic for his native Pontus and decided to return there. It takes little imagination to contrast the verdant mountains sweeping down to the narrow coastal plain, whose ports embraced the blue sea, with the noise and congestion of Rome, which we know from the savage descriptions of the satirists. Juvenal is the more caustic and graphic,²⁶ but Martial has the merit of brevity:

“Neither for thought nor for quiet is there any place in the city for a poor person. Schoolmasters in the morning do not let you live; before daybreak bakers yell; the hammers of the coppersmiths clang all day. On this side the money changer idly rattles on his dirty table Nero’s coins, on the other the hammerer of Spanish gold-dust 048beats his well worn stone with burnished mallet, and the raving throng does not rest.”²⁷

Prisca and Aquila would have begun their journey by cutting across the shin of Italy to Brindisi, following the Via Appia,²⁸ which had been traveled to the same goal by the poet Horace in the spring of 37 B.C. His hilarious account of the minor difficulties he encountered gives a vivid picture of life on that great road.²⁹ It took him two weeks to cover the 360 miles in the comfort guaranteed by the wealth of Maecenas.^b Prisca and Aquila would have had to walk and to pay their way by taking whatever jobs they could find.

At Brindisi they had to take a ship—and make the important choice between the northern and southern routes to Asia Minor. The northern route involved a short voyage across the Adriatic Sea to Dyrrhachium (today Durrës in Albania) and a long walk along the Via Egnatia to Byzantium (today Istanbul). The southern route meant a longer sea voyage down the west coast of Greece and through the Corinthian Gulf to Corinth, where they could find another ship for Ephesus. They evidently took the latter route, even though it was much longer and more expensive, because they ended up in Corinth. Why? I suspect it was the prospect of employment.

There is a hint that the expulsion of certain Jews from Rome took place not long after Claudius’ accession to power on January 25, 41.³⁰ Anyone who had traveled from the East, as had Aquila when he came from Pontus, would have been aware that the Isthmian games were celebrated at the sanctuary of Poseidon outside Corinth in May or June. Second in importance only to the Olympic games, and offering a much wider variety of amusements, the Isthmian games drew visitors from all over the Greek world. Aquila would have had no difficulty in foreseeing the demand for tents to house the visitors and for traders’ booths to serve them. Even if he and Prisca were too late to share in the preparations, they could be sure of repair work when the games were over.

Whenever or however they reached Corinth, Prisca and Aquila were well established when Paul arrived there in the spring of 50. Unless they were self-employed and had steady customers, they could hardly have given Paul shelter and work. What had happened in the intervening nine years? Even though Corinth was every bit as raucous as Rome, they had not gone through with their probable plan to return to Pontus. They may have been distracted by business success, but, as we shall see, 049this was not as great as some scholars suppose.³¹ Given the reason for their departure from Rome and what we know of their subsequent missionary career, it seems much more likely that they were kept in Corinth by a compulsion to preach the gospel. It is not difficult to imagine their feeling that they had been providentially directed to virgin territory. They could see a divine purpose in their expulsion from Rome.

Luke’s silence on this is an obvious objection to this interpretation. Acts presents Paul as the founder of the church at Corinth and says nothing of the role of Prisca and Aquila. The obvious, but gratuitous, answer is that Luke did not know about any such activity on their part. Even if he did, however, he would not have mentioned it because it would have interfered with one of his purposes in Acts, namely, to give a coherent line of development to churches that had sprung up without any planning.³² From his perspective, only an authorized apostle, such as Paul, could be considered the founder of churches. A hint of what actually happened at Corinth, however, may be detected in Luke’s treatment of the establishment of the church at Ephesus. He makes Paul preach the first sermon (Acts 18:19–21), but shows Prisca and Aquila establishing a community there (Acts 18:26–27) before Paul’s return to take up residence and assume responsibility for the church (Acts 19:1–10).

Hence we must assume that at Corinth Prisca and Aquila did what they subsequently did at Ephesus and at Rome, where we hear of “a church in their house” (1 Corinthians 16:19; Romans 16:5). The suggestion of spaciousness that this translation from the New Revised Standard Version conveys is contradicted by the fact that when Paul, in Corinth, lost his access to the synagogue, he availed himself of the offer of Titius Justus’ house in which to preach in order to have room to gather a crowd (Acts 18:7). Evidently the house of Prisca and Aquila, where Paul was staying (Acts 18:3), could not accommodate this dimension of his activities. This tells against the view of James Dunn that “they had the means to purchase a house in different centers.”³³ The grammatically more correct translation of the phrase quoted above is “the group [of believers] which meets in their home”; this does not necessarily imply that Prisca and Aquila owned the building where they lived in Corinth. What it does suggest is that Prisca and Aquila controlled access to their dwelling. They were not workers residing on their employer’s property, but were owners or, more probably, tenants of a workshop. In opposition to Gaius, who had the means to host “the whole church” (Romans 16:23), they could only accommodate a portion of the community.

There was virtually no difference between such workshops in east and west. Those excavated in Corinth³⁴ are so similar to those found in Ostia³⁵ and elsewhere that a generic description is valid for all major towns throughout the empire.³⁶ The shop was located on the ground floor of a building with an arched opening giving on to the street. The width varied from 8 feet to 14 feet. Those shops that were not shaded by the projection of the second floor over the sidewalk mounted inscribed linen awnings in summer. This opening was the only source of light and air for the ground floor and was closed at night by stout wooden shutters. The depth of the room ranged from 12 feet to 24 feet, and its height averaged 12 feet. There was no running water or toilet facilities. In one of the back corners, a series of steps in stone or brick was continued by a wooden ladder to a loft lit by an unglazed window centered above the shop entrance. This is where the family, who worked below, slept, cooked and ate.

How would this “living room” have been furnished? Once again the Roman satirists come to our aid:

“What did friend Cordus own? One truckle bed, too short for even a midget nympho; one marble-topped sideboard on which stood six little mugs; beneath it, a pitcher and an upended bust of Chiron; one ancient chest crammed with Greek books, though by now analphabetic mice had gnawed their way well into his texts of the great poets.”³⁷

“There went along a three-legged truckle-bed and a two-legged table, and, alongside a lantern and bowl of cornel, a cracked chamberpot was making water through its broken side; the neck of a flagon was lying under a brazier green with verdigris.”³⁸

The poor in any age possess little, and none of it new.

The layout of the shop was conditioned by the type of activity carried out there. Those selling food and/or drink needed facilities not required by dry goods stores. Manufacturing requirements varied according to the trade. Those of tentmakers were relatively simple. They needed storage space for different weights and widths of leather and linen. Each worker required a narrow bench on which tools were laid out, straight and curved needles, awl, punch, pincers, half-moon knives, shears, edge-shaver. They worked seated, in leather aprons stained by the wax they used both to roll the flax thread and to protect the hides.

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Such was the room in which Christians gathered with Prisca and Aquila to celebrate the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:17–34). It was not luxurious, but it was clean, and the leather and canvas stacked against the walls served as improvised couches. Others sat on the benches or stools. Children were ranged on the ladder. Depending on the size of the room the assembly numbered between 10 and 20 believers. In winter it must have been rather cozy. The shutters were closed against the biting wind, and a brazier gave both light and warmth. In summer it was a different matter. The shutters could not be left open without attracting the unwelcome attention of the street. The flickering flames of oil lamps intensified the heat of the airless crowded room. Such discomfort, however, mattered little to those whose sharing of bread and wine brought Christ into their midst. Their lives were burdened by ceaseless toil, and their living conditions were appalling. They knew their powerlessness in the face of the social and economic forces that threatened to engulf them. Yet as they contemplated Jesus in his ultimate self-sacrifice, they were strengthened by the knowledge that the power of God is made perfect in weakness.

It has been suggested that the move of Prisca and Aquila from Corinth to Ephesus (Acts 18:18–26) was perhaps due to a business failure.³⁹ This is based entirely on the erroneous assumption that they stayed in Corinth only 18 months (Acts 18:11), but in fact they lived there for some ten years. It is more probable that they went to Ephesus as part of Paul’s missionary strategy. His churches arched from Galatia in the east to Corinth in the west; Ephesus lay at the center. It was the obvious choice as his next missionary target, and the fact that it was roughly equidistant from all his 051other communities meant that he could stay in touch with them easily. Paul’s experience at Corinth had made him aware of the advantage of having a base already prepared when he arrived. It was a sacrifice for Prisca and Aquila to move again. They lost whatever clientele they had managed to build up in Corinth. But they had started from scratch before, and they knew that they could do it again. And this time they operated under a much more profound imperative than economic survival. The intense involvement implied by “they risked their necks for my life” (Romans 16:4) indicates that they had become an integral part of the Pauline mission. All that mattered was the spread of the gospel. Financial loss and personal sacrifice were alike irrelevant.

If this interpretation of the move from Corinth to Ephesus is correct, then the motivation of the further move of Prisca and Aquila to Rome needs no elaboration. As before, their role was to prepare for Paul’s arrival (Romans 1:10–13, 15:24). This time, however, duty was enhanced by pleasure. The return gave them the opportunity to renew the ties with family and friends that had been so brutally broken some 15 years earlier. Two arguments indicate that they traveled to Rome during the summer of 55. First, it would have been unsafe to do so before the death of Claudius on October 13, 54. The news of this event could not have reached Ephesus before April 55 when, as Pliny said, “spring opens the sea to travellers.”⁴⁰ Second, by the time Paul sent his epistle to the Romans from Corinth in the spring of 56, Prisca and Aquila were already well established in Rome; they had created a new house-church there (Romans 16:5).

How long Prisca and Aquila stayed in Rome we do not know, but they did not settle there permanently. Subsequently, they again appear in Ephesus. The information comes from 2 Timothy.⁴¹ It was written in Rome, where Paul was a prisoner (2 Timothy 1:16–17), but unfortunately its date is uncertain. That it was sent to Ephesus can be deduced from the commonly accepted view that the reason for sending Tychicus to Ephesus (2 Timothy 4:12) was to replace Timothy, whom Paul wanted by him in Rome (2 Timothy 4:9, 21).

In the course of the letter, Paul tells Timothy to “Greet Prisca and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus” (2 Timothy 4:19). Normally Paul reserves such greetings for letters to churches in which he had not lived (Rome and Colossae) because it would be invidious to single out individuals in communities in which he knew everyone. Paul, however, had lived at Ephesus for a number of years (Acts 19:10, 20:31). But this letter, in opposition to all the other Pauline letters, is not addressed to the community but to two individuals, and the selection is well motivated. Prisca and Aquila were among his oldest friends and most loyal collaborators. Onesiphorus had died after being very good to Paul in Rome (2 Timothy 1:16–17); to single out his family for a special greeting is therefore most appropriate. The absence of any mention of a house-church does not necessarily mean that Prisca and Aquila had changed their habits. Paul’s attention was focused on the personal, not the institutional, level.

At this point Prisca and Aquila disappear from history, but we can be sure that they were the same dynamic force in the church of Rome as they had been in those of Corinth and Ephesus.⁴²

The three drawings in this article come from the book City by David Macaulay, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Copyright © 1974 by David Macaulay, Reprinted by permission.

Aquila and his wife Priscilla are the most prominent couple involved in the first-century expansion of Christianity. They were Paul’s hosts at Corinth (Acts 18:2–3). Subsequently they directed house-churches at Ephesus (1 Corinthians 16:19) and Rome (Romans 16:3–5). Their contacts with Paul and their presence in three of the most important centers of early Christianity—Corinth, Ephesus and Rome—underline their importance in the history of early Christianity. The couple is mentioned six times in the New Testament, but only twice with Aquila’s name first—once in the form “Aquila and Priscilla” (Acts 18:2) and once as “Aquila and Prisca” (1 Corinthians […]