Aquila

Aquila, whose name means eagle, was a Jewish Christian tentmaker originally from Pontus on the Black Sea coast who had settled in Rome until the emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from the city around A.D. 49. He and his wife Priscilla (Prisca) then moved to Corinth, where Paul met them on his first visit and worked with them at their shared trade (Acts 18:2–3). The couple became close associates of Paul, accompanying him as far as Ephesus when he left Corinth, and there they instructed the eloquent Apollos more fully in the Christian faith (Acts 18:18–26).

Paul's letters reveal a remarkably mobile couple who hosted house churches wherever they settled. They are greeted in Romans 16:3–5, where Paul notes they “risked their necks” for his life, in 1 Corinthians 16:19, and in 2 Timothy 4:19. The mention of a church in their house in both Rome and Ephesus suggests they moved back to Rome after Claudius's edict lapsed, making them a concrete example of the household-based Christian communities that characterized the first-century church.