This article incorporates text from Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), a publication now in the public domain. Lucius Sergius Paullus was a Proconsul of Cyprus under Claudius (1st century AD). He appears in Acts (13:6-13), where in Paphos Paul, accompanied by Barnabas and John Mark, overcame the attempts of Bar-Jesus or Elymas and converted Sergius to Christianity.
A boundary stone of Claudius mentioning Sergius was discovered at Rome in 1887. It records the appointment (AD 47) of the Curators of the banks and the channel of the river Tiber, one of who was Sergius. Since Paul's journey to Cyprus is usually dated to the first half of the 40s (and some scholars would date his visit even earlier), it is thought Sergius first served his three years as Proconsul at Cyprus, then returned to Rome, where he was appointed curator. As he is not greeted in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, it is possible he died before it was written.
Some mediæval legends have anachronistically identified him with Paul of Narbonne.
He was the first of six successive Senators named Lucius Sergius Paullus, of Antioch, Pisidia, including one Consul Suffect in 94 and another Consul in 168, the last of whom was Lucius Sergius Paullus, Senator, father of Sergia Paulla, who married Quintus Anicius Faustus, Legate of Numidia and Consul in 198, and had Quintus Anicius Faustus Paulinus, Legate of Moesia Inferior between 229 and 230 or c. 230 to 232.[1]