About A.D. 61 he was brought to Rome as a prisoner. Nero had already begun to disappoint the promise of the early years of his reign, and had given way to his un{ro\'ernable sava^erj'. For two years before his trial, St. Paul lived either in the praetorian barracks attached to the palace, or in the pr^torian camp (but see p. 33") in the N.E. of the city, — in a place in anj' case where, in spite of his bonds, he was brought into contact with the freed- men and slaves who formed part of the household of Nero (Ph l'^4^) ; or in the house of the centurion, stUl to be seen beneath the church of S. Maria in Via Lata, at the junction of the Via Lata and the Corso (the Via Flaminia) (see Lewin, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, ii. 238, 239, and Appendix (I.) for a sketch and plan of the house).
There is no evidence be3'ond the name for the Scuola di S. Paolo underneath the church of S. Paolo alia Regola(t.e. arenula, from the sand deposited by the Tiber) near the modem Ghetto, but the under^ound chamber is unquestionably old. Neither do we know with certainty the spot wiiere tiie trial of St. Paul took place. The Proitoriuin of Ph V3 ' is the whole body ol persons connected with the sitting in judgment, the supreme Imperial Court, doubtless in this case the Prefect or both Prefects of tile Prstorian Guard, representing the emperor io his capacity as the fountain of justice, together with the assessors and high officers of the court ' (see St. Paul the Trav. p. 35, and cf. art. Pfljetohicm). The Mamertin dungeon or Tuilianwn., under the church of S. Giuseppe de' Falegiiaml, remains as it was in apostoUc days, though the stairs leading to the lower dungeon are modem. The only entrance originally was through the hole in the roof. Here St. Peter and St. Paul are said to have been immured during St. Paul's second im- prisonment. The outbreak of Nero's fury, which resulted in a renewal of hostilities against the Christians, led to the numerous martyrdoms in the garden of Nero (now partly covered by St. Peter^s), where, amid sufferings of fiendish ingenuity, so many disciples sealed their testimony with their blood ('Tac. Ann. XV. 44 ; Suet. A'ero, 35 ; Kenan, llibbert Lecture, 70-9S ; Liglit- foot, St. Clement, ii. 26, 27). This was in a.d. 64-C5. About this time, or a little later, St. Paul suffered martyrdom by execution. He was led out of the city p.ast the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, along the Via Ostiensis, tlience along the Via Laurentina, to a spot near some springs, then known as Aqua S.alviEe, now called Tre Fontane, and there, bein^ a Rothmi citizen, was beheaded. This fact gives point to his words in Ph 23 * obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross,' i.e. to a more degrading form of death than the apostle hinisell would have bec-n allowed to suffer. The site is fixed partly by an unbroken tradition and partly by local evidence. It is a wild, desolate spot, almost uninhabitable through the prevalent malaria (the Trappist monks have of recent years redeemed it by planting eucalj-ptus), so that there would be everything against the invention of such a site for so important an event. This factor has very frequently to be borne in mind in judging of the likelihood or the reverse of a traditional site. Over the spot a memorial oratory was erected in the 5th cent., whose ' foundations were discovered in 1S07 beneath the present church of S. Paolo alle Tre Fontane, erected in the 17th cent., together with historical inscriptions in Latin and Armenian* (Lanciani, Pagan aiui Chriatian liottie, p. loti). Lanciani also quotes an interesting fact confirmatory of the tradition that the apostle was bche.aded under a stone pine. The Trappists were excavating in IS95 for the foundation of a water-tank behind the chapel, and found a mass of coins of Nero, together with several pine cones fossilized by age and earth pressure.
There is a continuous tradition, found first in Tertullian (Scorp. 16 ; de Primcript. 36) and in Caius of Rome (quoted by Eus. HE II. XXV. 6, 7), and repeated in varying fomis by lat«r writers, to the effect that St. Paul was buried on the Via Ostia. Says Caius: ' But I can show you the trophies of the apostles. For if you will go to the Vatican, or to the Ostian ro.ad. you will find the trophies of those who have laid the foundation of this church." So that about the beginning of the 3rd cent, the prev.alent belief in Rome was that St. Paul was buried on the Via Ostia. The translation of his body, together with that of St. Peter, to thecatacomb of St. Sebastian, to the spot called Platooia, occurred later, in A.D. 258, probably owing to the Valerian perse- cution, "rhis seems to dispose of the ingenious theory of .Mr. A. S. B^men (St. Peter and his Tomb in /inmc), that the aposllM were buried first of all in the catacomb, and only removed to the Vatican and the Ostian Way after the persecution of Valerian had ceased, and therefore enables us to accept the earlier and more likely theorj- of de Rossi. The tradition is that a certain Roman matron named Lucina, a disciple of the apostle, begged the body and buried it in her own garden on the Ostian road, at the s]>ot now marked by the Uisilica of S. Paolo fuori le mura. Lie Rossi has conjeclurally identified (and the identifica- tion is accepted by Lanciani and others) Lucina \vith Pomponia Gnecina, the wife of Aulus I'Inutus. the conqueror of Britain, of whom Tacitus (Annat. xiii. 32) records that she was accused of ' foreign superstition," was tried by her husband, and acquitted. Recent investigations have made it very probable that she was a Christian. An inscription was discovered in the 1 cemetery of St Callixtus, rrOMnONIOC rPHK«iNOa Th«