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Bible Dictionaries
Puteoli
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Πυτίολοι, now Pozzuoli)
The town of Puteoli lay on the northern shore of the Bay of Naples (Sinus Cumanus), and on the eastern side of the lovely Sinus Baianus, which was a bay within a bay. Originally a Greek settlement, it retained the name of Dicaearchia till the Romans established a colony there, when the Latin element swamped the Greek. Eastward the town was separated from Neapolis by a headland (Posilipo) which Augustus pierced with a tunnel, while westward it joined hands with Baiae, the gay resort of fashionable Rome. By the short Via Campania (or Consularis) it was connected with the Via Appia at Capua, which was 125 miles from Rome. Puteoli was not only the usual landing-place of travellers for Rome-such as St. Paul (Acts 28:13), Josephus (Vit. 3), and the prisoner Ignatius (Martyr. 5)-but the haven for the merchant-ships of Syria and Egypt in the east, of Carthage and Spain in the west. It was ‘the Liverpool of Italy’ (Conybeare-Howson, The Life and Epistles of St. Paul, new ed., 1877, ii. 433). Seneca (Ep. 77) gives a life-like picture of the Puteolan crowd gathering on the pier in spring to watch the fleet of Alexandrian corn-ships heaving in sight, easily distinguished ‘in magna turba navium’ because they alone were allowed to enter the bay carrying their top-sails. The mercantile supremacy of Puteoli is explained by Strabo (c._ a.d. 20): Ostia ‘has no port, owing to the accumulation of alluvial deposit brought down by the Tiber, … vessels therefore bring to anchor farther out, but not without danger’ (v. iii. 5). All this was changed by the construction at Ostia of the Portus Augusti, begun in the reign of Claudius and finished in that of Nero, close to the time (a.d. 59 or 60) of St. Paul’s arrival in Italy. The Apostle’s ship, however, sailed for the old port, so that he and his companions had to make the usual overland journey. In Puteoli they ‘found brethren’ of whom they had no previous knowledge (as the absence of the article proves), and ‘were cheered among them (παρεκλήθημεν παρʼ αὐτοῖς), remaining seven days’ (Acts 28:14). This reading is preferred by W. M. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveller, 1895, p. 212) and F. Blass (Acta Apostolorum, 1895, p. 287) to ‘were entreated by them’ (ἐπʼ αὐτοῖς), which would convey the idea that St. Paul, though a prisoner, was able to make his own arrangements; whereas the truth probably was that when Julius decided that a halt must be made for a week, the Apostle used the measure of liberty given him, and passed the time in happy fellowship with the little Christian Church. There had been a colony of Jews in Puteoli before the time of Christ (Jos. Ant. XVII. xii. 1, BJ_ II. vii. 1), so that the soil had been partly prepared for the seed of the gospel; and as ships plied between Puteoli and every port in Syria and Egypt, it was nothing wonderful that St. Paul found Christianity already planted in that great commercial city. Other Eastern cults took root there sooner than in Rome, as a temple of Serapis, frequented in the 2nd cent. b.c., proved. The modern town (population, 17,000) retains many relics of ancient greatness-amphitheatre, baths, circus, villas. Its cathedral is built into a temple of Augustus.
Literature.-Strabo, v. iv. 7; C. Dubois, Pouzzoles antique, 1908; C. Baedeker, Southern Italy and Sicily12, 1896.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Puteoli'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/p/puteoli.html. 1906-1918.
