Acts 18:2

‘And he found a certain Jew named Aquila, a man of Pontus by race, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome.'

On arrival in Corinth he must have been encouraged when he ‘found' a Jew named Aquila, a man of Pontus, who, along with his wife Priscilla, had lately left Italy because of the expulsion from Rome of all Jews in 49/50 AD. Suetonius, the Roman historian, tells us that ‘as the Jews were indulging in constant riots at the instigation of Chrestos, he (Claudius) expelled them from Rome'. ‘Chrestus' may simply refer to some slave by that name who was a constant troublemaker, but it may equally refer to the reaction of some of the Jews to the growth of the Christian church in Rome, slightly misinterpreted. If so it would suggest that already the church in Rome was large enough to be noticed. In fact the decree finally failed of its purpose simply because there were just too many Jews in Rome.