other · 59 · Caesarea Maritima
Three days after arriving in the province Festus went up to Jerusalem, where the chief priests laid out the case against Paul and asked as a favour that he be summoned there — planning an ambush on the road, as had been planned two years before. Festus answered that Paul was in custody at Caesarea and that they should come down. At the hearing they brought many serious charges they could not prove; Paul answered that he had committed no offence against the law, the temple or Caesar. Then Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favour — the same phrase Luke had used of Felix — asked whether he was willing to go up to Jerusalem and be tried there. Paul answered that he was standing before Caesar's tribunal where he ought to be tried, that if he had done anything deserving death he did not seek to escape it, and that no one could give him up to them as a favour: 'I appeal to Caesar.' Festus conferred with his council and said, 'To Caesar you have appealed; to Caesar you shall go.' It is a citizen's right, used once, and it is what carries the gospel to Rome under guard and at imperial expense.
To be tried before Caesar rather than handed back to the court that had already condemned him in absence.
An appeal a governor could not refuse, and a prisoner Rome now had to transport.