The Painted Messiah

by Craig Smith

  While his wife rode with Gratus's wife in a horse- drawn carriage, Pilate sat alone with Gratus in the prefect's gilded litter, carried by eight powerfully built slaves. They headed south toward the prefect's palace, which Pilate had seen briefly from the mouth of the harbour - a gleaming white complex of buildings perched close to the city wall. Venturing the occasional glance from his curtained window, Pilate observed a mix of peoples and colours and costumes. When he asked about this, Gratus explained that more than half the people of the city were indigenous Greek-speaking Syrians. The rest were Jews, Arabs, and Egyptians. After a moment, he added, The Jews create most of our problems.'

  At Pilate's inquisitive look, Gratus continued hurriedly. Not that there were any serious problems in Caesarea. Not at all, really. Not like Jerusalem at any rate. He only meant to say that they offered a strong voice and were generally at variance with the desires of the city magistrates, the emperor's prefect, and the rest of the populace - the Syrian Greeks in particular. Warming to his subject, Gratus informed Pilate that in Caesarea the Jews were in fact hardly more than a vocal minority. They hated the city's luxuries but appreciated the opportunity to trade. In the city of Tiberias, the capital of Galilee, where there were no such commercial advantages, Herod Antipas had offered free land to any Jew willing to move to the city. Gratus gave a casual shrug of his thin shoulders. 'Only a few of the worst sort responded to the offer.'

  'But Antipas is himself a Jew, if I understand it correctly,' Pilate answered.

  Gratus's smile had a touch of exhaustion about it. He looked like a man ready to go home. Pilate understood the matter correctly, he said. The Jews, on the other hand, still had trouble with the concept. 'You see, the Hasmonians, from whom the Herods descend, were Samarian and Idumaean originally. They adopted Judaism only a century ago, so they are not real Jews, only converts to the faith for political convenience. Herod set the example and the present generation continues it. They honour the public ceremonies fastidiously. As for the rest, they are as Roman as you or I.'

  'They are a strange people, I have heard,' Pilate answered, 'the real Jews.'

  'Incomprehensible, I'm afraid,' Gratus answered, his mouth grimacing oddly.

  'Sejanus believes all men, Prefect, are handled easily enough if one understands the essentials of management.'

  'Sejanus was a boy when I left Rome. But tell me, what does he say are the essentials?'

  'Taken together men are like horses, driven by the whip and restrained by the bit. One manages them successfully when neither instrument is abused.'

  Gratus' eyes momentarily registered the unintended insult of this remark, but rather than show his irritation, he pretended to be amused. 'With the Jews, sir, one rides a horse whose ears inevitably lie flat against its skull.'

  Pilate thought better than to answer this. He had never encountered a Jew in his life, real or otherwise.

  'I look forward to learning a great deal from your experience,' Pilate answered.

  'Then I must disappoint you. I sail tomorrow at first light.'

  'A pity,' Pilate murmured with the satisfaction of one anxious to get started with the business of governing and in no mood for a tired old man's discourses on history.

  Pilate had lived so long on the island of Capri that he had nearly forgotten the pleasures a city could offer. Caesarea provided racing and gladiator contests, jugglers, dancers and seemingly endless performances of tragedy and comedy. Hardly a week passed when the new prefect did not entertain hundreds of individuals remarkable for their cosmopolitan character: Romans one night, Syrians, Egyptians, or Greeks the next, once even a delegation of Parthian ambassadors who came for the express purpose of paying homage to the beauty of the prefect's wife, meaning of course they honoured her distant cousin, the emperor Tiberius.

  Pilate enjoyed the life, but it did not seduce him. His real passion was his work, and he turned to it the moment Gratus's ship cleared the harbour. An appointment lasted three years and it came with the understanding that a man returning to Rome after that amount of time, if he could last his full tenure, was expected to return as a wealthy individual. He had better, for his extended family expected it, and should he nurse any ambition beyond retirement to the countryside he would need money to win new appointments.

  In Capri construction projects had continued steadily throughout his entire six years. His harbour was active, but Pilate's opportunities for financial gain had been limited both by the number of ships arriving and by the fact that the lion's share of building occurred on the Villa Jovis of Tiberius - the one man in the empire it did not pay to extort. Now he would have three provinces as his own, including two major cities and the greatest harbour along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean between Antioch and Alexandria.

  The harbour itself was sufficient to make a man wealthy. Appropriate a fig here, a date there, he thought: over the course of a day a man could fill a shop with fruit! And tomorrow another. Then there was the copper, the iron ore, the timber, the precious building stones. Spices, fruits, grain, salt, beef, horses, sheep, pigs, goats - the list was endless. Men of business knew that everything moved swiftly with the Roman prefect's goodwill. The smart ones knew goodwill came at a price.

  The new prefect's first encounter with the Jews came early in his tenure and was unaccountably strange. The priests of the Temple of Jerusalem arrived by the overland route some two weeks after Pilate had established himself in the prefect's palace. They came, he thought, two weeks too late. He therefore ordered them to wait in his courtyard just beyond the great hall until he had finished his business. Late in the afternoon, when he would normally retire to the palace baths for exercise, Pilate ordered his adjutant, the centurion Cornelius, to bring the priests into his presence.

  Cornelius had long ago completed his required twenty-five years of service. A year or two shy of fifty he nevertheless maintained the extraordinary vitality of a man who has made a living with his physical abilities. Standing only an inch or two above average height Cornelius carried close to three hundred pounds, most of it muscle. He had never won a footrace, but then neither had he ever needed to run from the battlefield. Where he stood the battle always went well. His quickness with the short sword was legendary, his courage the sort that had made Rome the ruler of the world.

  It was the custom of their generation for a Roman to shave each morning, but Cornelius's slave shaved his entire head for him. The effect was to reveal innumerable scars, lumps and dents. Cornelius had a broad, grim mouth and a long flat nose that had obviously been broken a few times. Like almost all senior centurions Cornelius enjoyed the prestige of a war hero simply by virtue of his rank. The backbone of the Roman infantry, such men were known to be the greatest fighters in the army. After a lifetime of war, many of these individuals were so skilled at combat that officers rarely made a critical decision without first consulting their most senior centurions. A centurion finishing twenty-five years could generally expect to retire to a farm in the countryside and live comfortably to the end of his days, but for men like Cornelius, still in good health, extended tours of duty were possible. These men would then generally work with commanders.

  Pilate had a dozen tribunes in his service, children of wealthy senators and equestrians getting their first taste of military life. Such men were relatively useless and yet required a great deal of attention, being as they were the future of Rome. No commander could attend to business and give them much of his time, so it devolved upon the most senior centurions to see that they learned the workings of a Roman army.

  Cornelius returned to the great hall a few minutes after Pilate had sent him to bring the priests in. With a rare and, to those who did not know him, frightening smile, the centurion announced, 'They refuse to enter the building, Prefect. They ask rather that you come to them outside.'

  Pilate blinked in surprise. The prefect appointed the high priest of the Temple of Jerusalem. The priests served him, as he served the emperor. He had rather have waite
d six months than give them the satisfaction of travelling first to Jerusalem, no matter how pressing his business with them. They had come to him after an unconscionable delay of a fortnight and now refused to see him unless he came outside his hall to meet them? 'Refuse?' he stammered. 'They refuse?'

  'They fear they will contaminate themselves by entering a pagan hall.'

  'That's ridiculous. Send them in!' Cornelius gestured toward the imago standard, bearing the tiny bronze head of Tiberius, then swept his arm around the hall to indicate the other standards and pennants carried by the troops Pilate commanded. Many of these displayed the image of an animal. Besides these the hall quite naturally contained various stone images of gods and men - all contaminants to the Jewish sensibility. 'Their religion forbids them to look upon the images of men and beasts, Prefect.'

  'Tell Annas—'

  'The high priest is not here. He has sent his sons to greet Caesar's new prefect.'

  Pilate stood, the back of his thighs aching, his chest heaving. 'The high priest is not here? Do I understand you correctly, Centurion?'

  Cornelius seemed suddenly uncertain of himself. He reported only what the priests had told him, that is to say, what the servants of the priests had told him, and did not care to endure the wrath of an imperial officer - especially as it ought to have been directed elsewhere. 'That is the impression they have given, Prefect.

  Perhaps I am mistaken, but I don't believe he is here.'

  Having come to his feet and the end of his patience, Pilate marched out of the hall. By the time he arrived at the courtyard his fury was absolute. 'Bring the priests to me, if their religion allows them to stand in the sunlight!'

  His guards responded to Cornelius's command, a quiet nod of the old centurion's head. The priests were brought through the gate of the palace like criminals herded by Roman infantry - a dozen-to-fifteen of them. Pilate did not bother to count. They were bearded and dirty. Their leader screamed incoherently at Pilate.

  'You will speak Latin,' Pilate answered quietly. He had no training in Greek beyond a painful six years of reading Homer and the Greek tragedians and could not understand any but the most rudimentary phrases of the obscene koine Greek of the region.

  Cornelius answered for the priest. 'They claim to know only Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew, Prefect.'

  Pilate demanded to know what the man had said, and Cornelius spoke to him in Greek. When the leader answered him, Cornelius said to Pilate, 'He says we defile them by forcing them to walk under the Golden Eagle at the gate to the courtyard.'

  'Defile?' Pilate longed for his short sword. If he had been wearing it at that moment, he would have rushed upon them at once.

  'We need someone to translate this, Prefect. I know only enough Greek to buy wine and women.'

  Pilate smiled without glancing at the centurion. 'I will remember that, Centurion, the next time I need either. Find us an interpreter then.'

  Cornelius sent a tribune scurrying for one while Pilate stood on the steps of his palace facing the rabble of Jewish priests in perfect silence. They were, he thought, exactly as Gratus described, like horses with their ears flat against their skulls. At the moment they were talking among themselves furiously. They seemed to want to leave his presence, though Pilate's guard made that quite out of the question.

  A young Syrian connected to the auxiliary cavalry arrived from within the hall and spoke to the priests. When they had finished talking in what seemed to be a heated exchange of Greek, the Syrian turned to Pilate. 'You pollute them, Prefect, by requiring them to stand before the standards of the Fretensis.'

  Pilate turned and saw the familiar standards, pennants and banners arrayed over his door. As he still considered them and just what he wanted to do with these impertinent priests, the Syrian continued.

  'In their religion they are not allowed to look upon human or animal images.'

  Pilate gave Cornelius a pleasant smile he would have no trouble interpreting. 'Have we more than one interpreter in the palace, Centurion?'

  'We have many, Prefect.'

  'Then you will inform this man that when he preaches to me again in his own words or speaks to these men anything but what I have said, I will have him cut open and hanged from the palace gates.'

  Cornelius told the man in Latin, as if he needed to hear it again: 'Be advised, sir. Speak only the words of Caesar's prefect and the priests. Nothing more - on your life.'

  The young man began to answer, then thought better of it and simply nodded.

  Tell them,' Pilate said, 'they may look upon the standards of the Roman Legions or they will die at the hands of those same men they insult. The choice is theirs.'

  The translation followed promptly, and the Jews roared angrily. Some addressed Pilate, some spoke to one another. As it was not in Greek, but Aramaic, the translator began speaking to the Jews in Greek, asking them to speak a language he could translate.

  'Execute him,' Pilate said.

  Cornelius seemed not to understand for a moment, but as Pilate glared at the interpreter he understood and ordered his guards to take the Syrian by his arms. The poor man's urgency to get the Jews to talk in Greek was now forgotten. He screamed in Latin for Pilate to have mercy.

  Pilate spoke quietly to Cornelius. 'Why is that man still speaking, Centurion?'

  Cornelius gave no order this time, but drew his own sword and walked forward. He swept the point of his weapon directly down across the Syrian's stomach in a vertical slash. While the young man still stood with a look of surprise, his blood poured over the white marble steps. Cornelius ordered him suspended from the palace gate and the two soldiers holding the man began dragging him away - still screaming, for he had not yet expired from his wound. A third soldier went for rope.

  The priests at last were silent.

  A young tribune, pale and stricken by what he had seen, was sent to bring a second interpreter out. Pilate showed the new interpreter his predecessor, now hanging over the road leading into the prefect's palace compound with his guts half-out of his body, and asked him if he thought he could do a better job.

  The man said he hoped as much, and Cornelius explained his duties to him without a glimmer of emotion.

  'Where is Annas?' Pilate asked the priests. The interpreter repeated the question in Greek.

  The Jews consulted quietly with one another, determining their spokesman. He was elected quickly and spoke to Pilate with the respect one shows the emperor's prefect. 'The high priest regrets he is unable to make the long journey to Caesarea Maritima. His age does not permit it, but he hopes soon to meet you when you travel to Jerusalem.'

  'I am not interested in regrets. It is the custom of the high priest to serve Caesar's prefect, not the other way around. You will kindly inform Annas that as his age limits him, he no longer holds his title.'

  'As you wish, sir. May I kindly ask whom you desire to name in his place?'

  Pilate studied the man's expression as the interpreter repeated his acquiescence in Latin. 'Who among you are his sons?'

  They identified themselves. The man they had elected as their spokesman was not among that select group. That made him the one they were willing to sacrifice.

  'And what is your name?'

  'Caiaphas.'

  'Are you a priest, Caiaphas?'

  'We are all priests of the Temple, sir.'

  'What is your relationship to Annas?'

  'I have no familial relationship to him, sir.'

  'Congratulations, my friend. You are the new high priest of the Temple of Jerusalem. Please me, and you shall become the second most powerful man in Judaea. Resist me, and you will envy the death of that unfortunate Syrian hanging at my gate.'

  Hearing these words in Greek, Caiaphas neither blinked nor turned to examine the man whose only crime was to ask the priests to speak in a language he could understand.

  Pilate liked that about his new high priest. He liked the man mightily, in fact. He then surveyed the other priests so he would not f
orget their faces, the sons of Annas in particular, then turned and walked back into his palace.

  As an afterthought to his meeting with the Jewish priests, Pilate sent for one of the magistrates of longstanding to appear before him. Like the Jewish priests who left the courtyard, the magistrate passed under the corpse of the Syrian without daring to look at the open wound. 'In Caesarea,' Pilate said to the man, 'we hang all the imperial standards, including the imago which bears the bronze head of Tiberius. Is this not true?'

  It was, of course, a matter of demonstrable fact, but the magistrate, who was also a Syrian, could not stop himself from answering lavishly. The standards adorned every public square and every public building. Was there a problem? Pilate asked how the Jews of Caesarea dealt with such an affront to their religion.

  The magistrate grew more circumspect. 'They endure it, Prefect. As you know, their religion—'

  'I should warn you,' Pilate interrupted, 'the last man who tried to explain the Jewish religion to me is hanging at the gates to my courtyard.'

  'Of course, Prefect.'

  'That is your answer? They endure it?'

  'Caesarea is a Roman city, so the Jews adapt. They avert their eyes from the images.'

  'Are you telling me there is not a single image of the emperor in Jerusalem?'

  'Excuse me for saying it, but that would be an outrage, Prefect.'

  'I am not so sure I will. The imperial standards adorn every city in the empire as a matter of law. Every city!'

  'Not Jerusalem, Prefect.'

  Pilate brought the matter up with his wife that evening over their meal. Did it not seem to her an insult to the Roman religion, this refusal to honour their emperor? In the east, after all, Tiberius was to be honoured as a god. Procula said she thought it exceedingly strange that a city should insult Tiberius in this fashion.