The object
Nine fragments of a stone slab from the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, inscribed in Greek with a letter of the emperor Claudius concerning the city.
The inscription
The key line names the governor of the province. Square brackets mark letters restored by editors:
[Lucius Jun]ius Gallio, my [friend] and [pro]consul
Discovery
The fragments were found in the French excavations at Delphi. Émile Bourguet published four of them in 1905, and André Plassart published the fuller set of nine in 1970.
The date
The letter names Claudius as acclaimed imperator for the twenty-sixth time. Other inscriptions show that he received this acclamation in the first half of AD 52. Gallio was therefore in office in AD 52, most probably for the year beginning in the early summer of 51.
Paul in Corinth
Acts places Paul in Corinth for eighteen months (Acts 18:11), during which he was accused before Gallio:
But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat,
Gallio refused to judge “questions about words and names” and drove the accusers from the court (Acts 18:14–16). Paul had met Aquila and Priscilla in Corinth, lately come from Italy because Claudius had ordered the Jews to leave Rome (Acts 18:2), an expulsion that Suetonius also records.
What it establishes
That Gallio, brother of Seneca, was proconsul of Achaia around AD 51–52, as Acts says. It gives a fixed point from which the rest of Paul’s career is dated.
Open questions
Some scholars place Gallio’s year in 52–53 rather than 51–52, and the stone does not say when in his term Paul appeared before him. The difference shifts Paul’s chronology by about a year.
Where it is now
Delphi Archaeological Museum, Greece.
