The belief that Malta is the island on which St. Paul was wrecked is so
rooted in the common Maltese, and is cherished with such a superstitious
nationality, that the Government would run the chance of exciting a tumult,
if it, or its representatives, unwarily ridiculed it. The supposition
itself is quite absurd. Not to argue the matter at length, consider these
few conclusive facts:--The narrative speaks of the "barbarous people," and
"barbarians,"[1] of the island. Now, our Malta was at that time fully
peopled and highly civilized, as we may surely infer from Cicero and other
writers.[2] A viper comes out from the sticks upon the fire being lighted:
the men are not surprised at the appearance of the snake, but imagine first
a murderer, and then a god from the harmless attack. Now in our Malta there
are, I may say, no snakes at all; which, to be sure, the Maltese attribute
to St. Paul's having cursed them away. Melita in the Adriatic was a
perfectly barbarous island as to its native population, and was, and is
now, infested with serpents. Besides the context shows that the scene is in
the Adriatic.
[Footnote 1:
Acts xxviii. 2. and 4. Mr. C. seemed to think that the Greek words had
reference to something more than the fact of the islanders not speaking
Latin or Greek; the classical meaning of [Greek: Barbaroi].-ED.]
[Footnote 2:
Upwards of a century before the reign of Nero, Cicero speaks at
considerable length of our Malta in one of the Verrine orations. See Act.
ii. lib. iv. c. 46. "Insula est Melita, judices," &c. There was a town, and
Verres had established in it a manufactory of the fine cloth or cotton
stuffs, the _Melitensis vestis_, for which the island is uniformly
celebrated:--
"Fertilis est Melite sterili vicina Cocyrae
Insula, quam Libyci verberat unda freti."
Ovid. Fast. iii. 567.