Pontius Pilate: A Novel
Page 4
On the day of the wedding, a chain of ceremonial was meticulously observed, some of it dating from the dawn of Rome. The night before, Procula had dedicated her childhood trinkets to the household lares, those good spirits of her old home whose protection she would abandon the next day. To ensure good fortune, she slept that night in a tunica recta, an expensive ivory-colored bridal tunic woven in one piece from the top down.
At early dawn, the same tunic was now secured to her waist by a girdle of wool, fastened with the “Knot of Hercules,” a complicated hitch named for the guardian of wedded life. Only the new husband might untie it.
Dressing the bride was a mother’s prerogative, and Procula knew that hers would make a ritual of it, since she was an only child. For weeks the mistress of the Proculeius household had been planning this wedding, but now that the day arrived, her well-chiseled features were drawn with worry that some important item had been overlooked. With exquisite care she applied several strands of silver jewelry, and finally took a spear to her daughter’s head. Ancient custom, betraying the violence of tribal marriage by capture, demanded that the bride’s hair be parted by a spear into six locks. A flowing gossamer veil of red-orange silk completed the ensemble, held in place by garlands of flowers. While her mother brushed aside a tear or two, Procula looked at herself in a mirror of highly polished metal and was frankly pleased.
Meanwhile, dressed in a gleaming new toga, Pilate was surrounded by comrades who crowned his head with a floral wreath. Then a glad troop of Pontii and their friends accompanied him for the short walk over to the Proculeius residence, which they found surrounded with rows of parked litters and waiting slaves. Wreathed with boughs of greenery and fairly sprouting with flowers, the mansion seemed more an arboretum. Incense and exotic perfumes hovered about the house, since the warm, breezeless June morning provided little diffusion.
Inside, Pilate was heralded with a glad shout from the great throng of guests, but all eyes quickly returned to the robed auspex who was busy taking the omens. He was an honored friend of the Proculeii who, acting as unofficial priestly augur, had a messy but necessary task to perform.
“Bring forth the consecrated ewe!” he sonorously intoned, for the ancient rite which inaugurated all public functions in Rome was about to begin.
The assembly of guests hushed with anticipation as a beribboned sheep was led to an altar set up in the center of the atrium. It was important that the animal seem to approach willingly, so a little fodder had been strewn below the altar. The sheep saw it, bleated approvingly, and hurried in to its fate. The augur sprinkled a little incense, meal, and salt on the victim’s forehead, offering a prayer in what was supposed to be Etruscan, a nearly dead language. Then he took a sacred mallet, cradled the head of the sheep in his arm, and smashed its skull with one blow. After cutting the throat of the dead creature, he caught the blood in a basin and sprinkled it on the altar. Finally, he carefully slit open its belly to inspect the liver, intestines, and gall bladder, which still quivered and twitched with departing life.
Absolute silence commanded the hall. If the entrails were in any way abnormal in such rites, armies could not go out to fight, the Senate would suspend its business, and certainly weddings would have to be postponed.
Since this was a dismal prospect after so much planning, Roman nuptials habitually had a second ewe in reserve in case the first ungenerously presented bad entrails. This gave way to an even more logical custom: the auspex at weddings was never to look too closely for abnormalities, and he never did.
After further probing and hesitation for due effect, the augur finally looked up. “Exta…bona!” he cried, with a smirk. “The viscera are good!”
“Bene! Bene!” shouted the guests. It was now proper for Procula, who never suspected anything could go wrong, to give a glad sigh of relief: the wedding could proceed after all. She and Pilate solemnly entered the atrium.
As a bachelor of long standing and a man of experience, Pilate had always assumed he would face his wedding ceremony with a certain cool detachment, if not resignation. But now, watching his bride approach him, he was quite unexpectedly overtaken by a flood of complex emotions. Initially, but thankfully for only one terrifying instant, the girl appeared to be a total stranger and Pilate could not imagine what this young, rather silly-looking girl had to do with him. Next, he was convinced that the whole ceremony would degenerate into a long series of disastrous social blunders, making himself and his bride the laughingstock of Rome. First, he, or worse, Procula, would be unable to remember the few simple procedures of the wedding ceremony. Then, instead of proposing the graceful toasts at which he had had so much practice in his public career, he would find himself tongue-tied at the crucial moment and blurt out only a few incomprehensible words.
Mercifully, at the sight of Procula’s sure and graceful pace as she walked toward him, Pilate returned to normal, felt secure in his love, and took a slight step forward to meet his bride. Procula’s pronuba, or matron of honor, now led the bride over to the groom. The pair joined right hands.
“Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia,” said Procula, looking serenely into Pilate’s eyes.
A little lad called a camillus now presented a covered basket, from which the couple took a cake of coarse wheat bread and placed it upon an altar, offering prayers to Jupiter, Juno, and several gods of the countryside. Then a cry erupted from the assembly of guests, “Feliciter! Feliciter! Good luck! Happiness!” for the two were now man and wife.
A lavish wedding banquet commenced, with festivities lasting throughout the day. Proculeius was known to set a superb table for even the commonest meals, and this nuptial feast for his only daughter was exactly the gourmand’s delight everyone had anticipated. Of the seven courses which followed, roast boar was the principal dish, but there were also more exotic viands, including Phrygian grouse, Gallic chitterlings, roast peacock, Circeiian oysters, and—the crowning delight—Corsican mullet. At a time when Rome’s vulgar rich were inflicting fifteen- and twenty-course dinners on their friends, Proculeius, the guests agreed, had shown remarkable restraint in his menu.
To wash down his delicacies, Proculeius had invaded his deepest wine cellar and retrieved rich Chalybonium from Damascus and other eastern vintages in honor of the newlyweds’ approaching journey, as well as Setinian and Falernian, the finest local wines. Some were chilled with snow, which several of Proculeius’s slaves had carried down at great effort from Apennine mountain summits.
With the last course of the day-long feast came distribution of the wedding cake, traditionally served to guests on bay leaves. Then the darkening twilight reminded everyone that a final, important stage of the celebration had been reached.
“Pompa! Pompa! The Procession!” cried the guests. The time had come to escort the bride to her new husband’s home. While a band of flute-players and torchbearers assembled at the door of the mansion, Procula embraced her mother and started sobbing. The groom walked over and brutally tore his bride out of her mother’s arms, while she screamed all the louder. But all the guests were laughing and cheering, for the whole scene was just an act, the customary show of violence which etiquette required at Roman weddings ever since the Rape of the Sabine Women.
Procula quit struggling and broke into a radiant smile at her captor, kissing him happily before she took her place in the procession, which headed down the Via Tiburtina toward the heart of Rome. The flute-players led off, their music inviting any of the bystanding public to join the procession, as join they could and did. The torchbearers and younger wedding guests followed; next the bride herself, attended by two boys holding her hand on either side, while a third carried a wedding torch of twisted hawthorn in front of her as a charm against magic. The little camillus pranced along proudly with his basket. Bridesmaids just behind Procula were carrying the symbols of her future domestic life, the distaff and spindle. Then, almost as an afterthought, came the groom, who threw walnuts to the street urchins of the city as symbols of fertility.
Last in the procession marched the parent Proculeii and Pontii, their older friends and relatives, and finally, a roistering honor guard of praetorian officers.
Since he would be leaving Rome shortly, Pilate had not purchased a house for himself. Instead, a fine old friend of the Pontii, who had retired to his mountain villa for the summer, graciously allowed the newlyweds to use his town house during their remaining weeks in Rome. It was here that the noisy, lusty, flame-flickering cavalcade delivered the bridal couple.
Now Procula was lifted over the threshold, for a chance stumble at the door would have been the worst possible omen for her future married life. Inside, Pilate offered her a glowing fire brand and a small vase of water, symbols of life and worship together. Procula accepted these, repeating a final time the wedding formula, “Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia,” and then lit the fireplace with the torch which had preceded her. The hearth blazed up in soaring triangles of flame—a good omen.
After Procula prayed to the gods for a happy marriage, her pronuba led her to the nuptial couch, which was situated in the atrium. Then she left, closing the door behind her. Pilate’s officer friends serenaded them just outside the door—a time-honored nuptial song. Then they too left.
Bride and groom looked at each other and smiled. It was the first silence and solitude they had experienced since dawn. He took off his now-wilted floral wreath. She did the same. He unwound himself from his suffocating toga, but she just stood there, shyly. Pilate pulled off her flaming red veil, gathered her in his arms, and kissed her tenderly. Then he lifted the lissome little figure off her feet and carried her over to the marital couch, which they would use that night and never again.
Chapter 3
Several weeks of post-nuptial events followed a large Roman wedding. On the evening after their marriage, Pilate and Procula hosted a second banquet, at which she offered her first sacrifice to the penates, another group of household deities who were first cousin to the lares. Procula still had some faith in these guardian gods, unlike her husband, who merely smiled indulgingly whenever she discussed religion, or “superstition,” as he styled it. Yet Pilate would have been reluctant to alter the traditional rituals and ceremonials. That would have been an affront to history, a violation of custom, even patriotism.
Additional dinner parties, given by various friends, consumed the rest of June. The adjustment to wedded life was particularly happy for Procula, since before her marriage she, like any Roman girl, had been closely guarded by her parents and only rarely appeared in public. Marriage was her literal emancipation. As matrona, she became a near-equal of men, completely in charge of the house, and free to come and go at will. Nowhere in the ancient world did women have so high a status as in Rome. Wrapped in her wifely garb, the ample and convoluted stola, Procula was now treated with deference throughout the city, be it dusty street or public theater, and no one, not even officers of the law, dared lay a hand on her.
Since Procula had inherited her grandfather’s canny business sense, Pilate cheerfully surrendered to her the management of their household affairs. He also discussed matters of state with her, particularly those now affecting his future career. When close friends wondered how they were getting on as newlyweds, she retorted, “Splendidly. We agree on everything…except politics and religion.” That regularly drew a chuckle, since the battle of the sexes in Rome was usually joined at these two arenas.
Surprised at the joy of married life, Pilate chided his bride, “Why didn’t you liberate me sooner from those barracks at the Castra Praetoria?” But one undercurrent of concern was troubling him. Despite Sejanus’s assurances that all was well with his overseas appointment, Pilate had not yet received word of a formal commission from Tiberius. Until he did, nothing could be regarded as settled, final.
A further complication was the absence of the princeps. For months he had kept announcing plans to take a long trip away from bothersome Rome, but had then canceled them so frequently that people began calling him “Callippides,” the famed Greek clown whose big act was to imitate the motions of running without moving an inch. But now Tiberius startled Rome by actually leaving town. His stated purpose was to go down to Campania to dedicate as a temple the house in which Augustus had died, but astrologers were predicting he would never return to Rome.
Pilate did not need the stars to intuit what had happened. He knew that Sejanus had succeeded in his gentle campaign to lure Tiberius away from the city, perhaps to the isle of Capri. Not only would this provide the princeps a long-deserved vacation; just incidentally, it would also leave Sejanus in charge of Rome as Tiberius’s deputy.
However, Sejanus’s success in arranging the emperor’s vacation apparently spelled Pilate’s failure, since provincial offices were usually changed about the first of July, and unless his formal appointment came soon he might have to linger in Rome another year. Could Sejanus have forgotten to remind the princeps? It would all be a profound political embarrassment, also a social one for Procula, who had been busy shopping for items from a list provided by the wife of Annius Rufus.
Pilate could not contact Sejanus, since he had accompanied Tiberius to Campania, and their precise whereabouts were unknown at the moment. But in the second week of July, a praetorian messenger from the imperial party delivered a tablet sealed with Sejanus’s unmistakable stamp. Pilate sliced through it with his dagger and read the following:
L. Aelius Sejanus to Pontius Pilatus, greeting. I wish I could report that the princeps has confirmed you as praefectus Iudaeae, but he insists he must first have a further interview with you. I had hoped that the time I presented you to him on the Palatine would have sufficed, but you recall how preoccupied he was that day with the Thracian insurrection.
After dedicating a temple to the Divine Augustus at Nola, we plan to go on to Capri. This week and the next we will be at the emperor’s villa called “The Grotto.” Tiberius requests that you see him here before we move on to Campania. Take the Appian Way till you reach the sea at Tarracina, then follow the shore road. Come the second day after you receive this, if possible. Farewell.
It took Pilate and his driver about twelve hours to reach the Mediterranean as they clattered away from Rome in their open cisium, a two-wheeled, two-horse carriage used for rapid trips. The morning had been magnificent, and the scenery just south of Rome never failed to inspire. Almost washing the highway was the jewel-shaped Alban Lake; just beyond it towered the proud summit of Mount Albanus, which dominated the countryside. A millennium earlier it had been a grumbling volcano which kept the area uninhabited, but then it cooled, allowing people to settle beneath its slopes.
That afternoon, however, grew hostile. A smoldering Italian sun hung in the sky, untempered by any breezes from the sea. But what made the journey finally unbearable was the notorious Pontine Marsh, a vast, fever-breeding swamp which now bordered the highway. Caesar had planned to reclaim it for agricultural land, a project cut short by the daggers of the Ides of March.
A night in coastal Tarracina restored Pilate for his conference the next day, and he arrived at The Grotto by mid-morning. The imperial villa was perched on a palisade above the Mediterranean coast. Below it lay the grotto proper, a huge natural cavern opening onto the seashore, which was used to good advantage as an outdoor dining room and recreation area. The coastline south of Tarracina was perforated with large caves, and it was in the most spectacular of these that Tiberius had fashioned his grotto.
Praetorian comrades at the entrance to the rambling villa smiled and saluted as Pilate climbed down from his carriage and brushed the dust off his tunic. Sejanus appeared in the vestibule. “A timely arrival, Pilate,” he said. “We’ve been discussing the eastern provinces. Refresh yourself and then join us in the peristyle over there.”
Entering the room a bit self-consciously a short time later, Pilate found Tiberius sitting among the friends who had accompanied him on the journey to Campania. They served also as his advisers, a kind of unofficial imperial cabinet.
“And the eloquent Curtius Atticus—”
“The Atticus, who was such a close friend of Ovid?” inquired Pilate.
“The same,” smiled Atticus a little nervously, pleased at the recognition but embarrassed at the association, since Augustus had banished the poet Ovid to the shores of the Black Sea for his role in corrupting Julia. Too late Pilate recognized his blunder.
“And Thrasyllus of Rhodes,” Sejanus resumed, “scholar, philosopher—”
“Court astrologer he is!” Tiberius interjected with a chuckle, acknowledging the public paradox that, although he had banished astrologers from Italy, he had kept one for himself. Several Greek literati were then introduced.
But the focus of interest in the room remained Emperor Tiberius, a tall, gaunt figure, dressed no more ostentatiously than a senator. His was the head that virtually ruled the world, and yet Pilate found it disappointingly, imperially, and totally bald across its entire crown. The face, hollow-cheeked and triangular in its flare downward from wide temples, was rather pimpled and pockmarked from acne, two of the larger eruptions covered with plasters. One rumor had it that Tiberius left Rome because he was becoming sensitive to his physical appearance. Pilate stared at the princeps—his first time at this close a range—and thought the stories of the ulcerous and festering face somewhat exaggerated. Determination still showed in the broad jaw and pressed mouth, though Tiberius did look every month of his sixty-six years.