Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 27:1

"And when it was determined that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and certain other prisoners to a centurion named Julius, of the Augustan band." — Acts 27:1 (ASV)

Paul and certain other prisoners. The Greek for “other” implies that they were prisoners of a different class. It is probable, however, that they also had appealed to the emperor, as there would otherwise be no reason for sending them to Rome.

A centurion of Augustus’ band. Literally, of the Sebaste. On the band or cohort as a subdivision of the Roman legion, see Note on Acts 10:1. Three different explanations have been given of the term translated “Augustus.”

1. The cohort may have consisted of soldiers levied in Sebaste (= Augusta) or Samaria. Josephus mentions a squadron of Sebastene cavalry (Ant. xx. 6, § 1; xix. 9, § 2), and there may have been a corresponding band of foot-soldiers.
2. Nero about this time had formed a kind of bodyguard, consisting of some 3,000 young men of the equestrian order, who accompanied him to games and spectacles, and whose chief business it was to applaud him in his speeches and recitations. To these he gave the name of Augustani (Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 15; Suetonius, Nero, c. 25), a term of which Sebastene would be the natural Greek equivalent.
3. A certain Julius Priscus appears in Tacitus, Hist. ii. 92 as appointed by Vitellius to be one of the prefects of the Praetorian cohorts, which, as specially under the emperor’s personal command, might naturally be called by his name; and he has been conjecturally identified with the centurion mentioned here.

Of these, the second explanation seems the most probable, but it is not absolutely incompatible with the third.

On this assumption, as it is not said that the cohort itself was at Caesarea, it is possible that he may have accompanied Festus as an escort to his province and was now returning to Rome.