Pontius Pilate: A Novel

by Paul L Maier

  It was the matter of his defense which led Pilate to leave Judea as soon as possible. He wanted to hurry to Rome, since it would be to his advantage to catch the ear of the princeps before it was filled with Samaritan deception, he explained to Procula. It would require another terrible overland journey for her—the Mediterranean was closed to distance shipping in December—but they resolved to outrace the Samaritans.

  Shortly before their departure, the disturbing news came like a Parthian shot. During a visit to Jerusalem, Vitellius granted a Jewish request to regain custody of the high priest’s garments, pending Tiberius’s approval. Jerusalemites greeted that bit of diplomacy with wild enthusiasm. The proconsul also announced that the emperor had ordered his Syrian legions to fight King Aretas in behalf of Herod Antipas. Now Pilate had to leave not only in dishonor, but with the knowledge that his rival had finally triumphed. With Amipas this high in the graces of the princeps, the future looked ominous for Pontius Pilate.

  Cornelius had loyally volunteered to accompany his prefect back to Rome, but Pilate asked him to remain instead and communicate any future information which would aid his case, should any arise. After a final review of his auxiliaries, Pilate formally transferred command to Marcellus. His troops urged him to hurry back to Judea, but Pilate merely smiled gratefully. That night, Cornelius and his wife hosted Pilate and Procula at a small gathering of their closest friends on the eve of their departure.

  Early the next morning, they set out on the road to Rome via Antioch in a caravan of four heavy carriages, accompanied by members of their personal staff. For Pilate, as for Palestine, it was the passing of an era.

  Chapter 22

  The return journey could not have been taken at a worse time. Late December lay almost at the center of mare clausum, the November 10 to March 10 period of closed sea, when none but the foolhardy would risk a voyage on the treacherous winter Mediterranean. Even the largest merchantmen making emergency runs during these months resorted to risky coasting passages from port to port, but prevailing northwestern gales often delayed them for weeks. There was only one reliable option for anyone who had to get to Rome quickly at this time, the land journey across Asia Minor and Greece.

  Not that this route was more comfortable. Land travel stopped almost as completely as voyages during the winter because this was the rainy season, when the Anatolian plateau became a sea of mud, and the famed mountain pass at the Cilician Gates could be snowed shut for days. Even if the route were passable, howling blasts of north wind chilled warmblooded Mediterranean types.

  Yet Vitellius’s letter of accusation would be in the emperor’s hands before the year was out, for the imperial post took a maximum of forty days between Syria and Rome. Pilate, therefore, had had no choice but to use the land route despite its hazards and discomforts.

  Every twenty-five miles or so, the Roman highway north was punctuated by a series of mansiones, halting stations with overnight accommodations, and between each of these were two mutationes, changing stations for relays of fresh horses. In this way, the imperial post could speed its messages by exchanging horses each 8⅓ miles. Whenever Pilate’s entourage needed lodging or fresh horses, he simply produced his diploma, an official letter of introduction which the Roman government provided its traveling magistrates in order to facilitate their journeys. It also exempted Pilate’s party from any of the numerous road taxes, tolls, customs, and frontier duties.

  The trip to Antioch was uneventful, but as they rounded the corner of the Mediterranean into Asia Minor, a fierce sleet storm tore down on them from the Taurus Mountain range, ripping open the canvas covers on one of their carriages. Emergency patchwork failed to repair the damage as they limped and skidded into Tarsus, the eastern port of entry to the Cilician Gates. Here they halted for several days, waiting for word that the pass was cleared of snow. They used the time to provision themselves and have the tarpaulin mended.

  Just before resuming their journey, aides reported that the man who presented the bill for repairing the carriage canvas insisted on speaking to Pilate. They brought in a youngish, bearded fellow who looked like a Jew but dressed like a Roman. He stared at Pilate for several moments with a curious expression, the kind of glance someone might assume in observing a strange animal species at the zoo. Then, raising his finger and pointing directly at Pilate’s nose, he said, “You, Prefect, have committed the most heinous crime in history.”

  “What crime, wretch?” Pilate glowered.

  “The greatest atrocity of which a human being is capable, Excellency: crucifying the son of God.” He paused to let his words register. “But you were driven to it and can be forgiven…even for this.”

  Pilate was startled at the reference, intrigued that a man five hundred miles from Jerusalem should know about the Passover which he had all but forgotten in his present difficulties. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “One closely related to you in guilt, for once I also persecuted followers of Jesus. My name is Saul. I am a Pharisee, formerly a student of the Rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem, and now a tentmaker here in Tarsus until my time has come to teach the gentiles about the Christ.”

  Impatient to resume his journey, Pilate scowled at Saul and said, “Enough of your effrontery. I should have you thrown into jail for addressing a Roman magistrate in this manner.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Excellency. I, too, am a Roman citizen, and under the jurisdiction of the Proconsul Vitellius.” That statement, of course, neutralized Pilate’s threat. Saul continued, “I wanted to speak with you, because you, of all people, should know the truth of what happened in Jerusalem three years ago.”

  “Then tell me,” Pilate sneered. “Who stole the body, and how did they succeed with guards camped at the tomb?” The same elusive puzzle had never really been solved.

  “It wasn’t a grave theft. Yeshu returned to life. He rose from the dead.”

  Pilate shrugged. “Then you’re just another devotee of the Jesus cult.”

  But Saul insisted, “No, Prefect, not just another devotee. Once I hated the Nazarene and everything he stood for. You condemned only one innocent man, but I was so misguided in my zeal that I arrested many innocent followers of Yeshu in the name of the Sanhedrin.”

  “You were the one responsible for Caiaphas’s drive against them?”

  “Yes, in part. Did you know about the stoning of a man called Stephen?”

  “The lynching?”

  “Yes. Well, I helped organize it.”

  “Then why are you now defending Jesus? Why do you call him ‘Son of God’?”

  “Because I saw him…”

  “So did I. So what?”

  “I saw him a year after you crucified him.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “First hear my story, Prefect, then judge. Some time after the martyrdom of Stephen, I was traveling to Damascus in order to root out the followers of Yeshu there. But on the way, an overpowering event occurred…”

  The story of the conversion of the man who would one day be known as St. Paul made little impression on Pilate. But Procula, who was listening unobtrusively, was deeply interested and added this to the store of information about Jesus which she had continued accumulating. What particularly struck her were Saul’s closing comments. Both Pilate and he had been part of God’s higher design for the human race, he tried to explain. What took place that Passover had cosmic significance. All history would turn on that event, Saul predicted. Someday Pilate would understand.

  But he understood only that the whole conversation was verging too metaphysical for his tastes. He suggested that Saul take his money and be off. “If I, too, see Jesus on the road to Rome, I’ll begin to believe your story.” Pilate thought it a generous jocularity under the circumstances.

  “Just remember,” Saul urged, “when the staggering realization of whom you crucified finally dawns on you, don’t commit suicide, like Ish-Kerioth, the man who betrayed him. You can be forgiven. I was!”

  P
ilate had dreaded his coming confrontation with Tiberius. But now he had one small consolation. In Rome, at least, he would escape the flaming religious fanaticism of the East.

  Snow in the nearly mile-high pass of the Cilician Gates had melted enough to enable Pilate’s party to proceed. For forty miles they wound their way upward toward the Gates, a series of sharp defiles which notched the otherwise impregnable Taurus barrier. Near the summit, the pass tapered down to a precipitous narrows, where melted snow water gushed across the roadway. Here Pilate halted his entourage to remind them that Cyrus, Xerxes, Alexander the Great, and Caesar had all marched through the very gap in which they were now pausing. Procula was shivering. She wondered if Pilate might postpone his lecture until that evening.

  They continued along the route used by the Roman imperial post, since it alone remained open at all seasons. Leading northwest across Asia Minor on the old Persian King’s Highway, then via a short ship run to Philippi, the route continued west through Greece on the Via Egnatia to the Adriatic, where there was ferry service to Brundisium in Italy. The distance from Caesarea to Rome along this route was about two thousand miles, and allowing the average carriage travel time of twenty-five miles per day, the total trip would require about eighty days.

  The rest of the journey was a wearying succession of starting at dawn, traveling in the morning and early afternoon, halting at twilight. Evenings were spent either at the imperial mansiones or, occasionally, at public inns, where the best quarters were reserved for the Roman governor and his staff. Since the highway was virtually deserted during the winter, horses or accommodations posed no problem. Despite the constant cold drizzle which dogged their caravan, the journey was not as dreadful as Pilate and Procula had imagined, particularly since the inns were good, and the old cities of Sardis and Pergamum surprisingly impressive.

  By the end of February, 37, they finally reached the port of Dyrrachium on the Adriatic, where they boarded a ferry for the passage across the narrows to Brundisium on the Italian mainland. Here Pilate sought out the praetorian commandant at the port to get the latest news from Rome and Capri. The tribune, newly arrived from the capital to relieve a colleague, was indeed full of news.

  Tidings from Capri were not good. Tiberius’s mood had worsened over the last months, ever since the death of his friend and adviser Cocceius Nerva. Apparently, Nerva was so disenchanted with the direction of Roman government that he starved himself to death on Capri, despite Tiberius’s pleading at his bedside. Then, when Thrasyllus the astrologer also died, the princeps spent more time back on the mainland at villas of friends…But no, he had not returned to Rome. Yes, the senatorial trials, executions, suicides, and exiles were still continuing, the commandant assured Pilate, though not as many as in previous years. And yes, several of the suits still harked back to the Sejanian conspiracy. For example, Trio, the ex-consul, was finally implicated. He drew up a testament which taunted Tiberius for senility and for shirking imperial duties by his exile on Capri—after which, of course, he slit open his veins and died.

  News of the still tempestuous judiciary climate at Rome was hardly consoling to a governor returning in disgrace to face a hearing before the emperor, and Pilate left Brundisium in severe depression. He had hoped that the more than five years which had elapsed since the fall of Sejanus would have blunted Tiberius’s resentment. Apparently, time had not healed.

  Procula tried to cheer him as they traveled up the Appian Way, but inwardly she was as concerned as he. Their anxiety focused not on the accuracy of the Samaritan charges, but on the prospect of appearing before Tiberius in his present mood. They reviewed his chances, now in deadly earnest, since the long journey was ending and the confrontation would probably take place shortly.

  If the princeps restricted the hearing solely to the Samaritan indictment, Pilate felt he could clear himself. Before leaving Caesarea, he had taken depositions from all the officers who had accompanied him on the expedition to Mount Gerizim, and these testified to the dangerous nature of the tumult, the fact that the Samaritans were armed, and, above all, that they refused to lay down their weapons. In any of Rome’s provinces, this would spell treason. Pilate’s role in the field executions which followed, while perhaps less defensible, was not more than what other Roman prefects would have done in a similar situation.

  But would Tiberius limit his hearing to the Samaritan affair alone? In his present mood, he might easily use it as a wedge with which to pry open the Pandora’s Box of all Pilate’s administrative troubles. And if he chose to resurrect the Jewish complaints and probe his past relationship with Sejanus, then there was added danger. And even if Pilate were to make a good defense of his administration, he might achieve little if the seventy-seven-year-old princeps were approaching the illogic of senility. Pilate’s mood took on blacker hue.

  One recent precedent caused him special anxiety. Pomponius Labeo, who had been a provincial prefect like Pilate, was arraigned on charges of maladministration in the Balkans. Shorn immediately of the title “Caesar’s friend,” Labeo slashed his wrists and bled to death rather than face trial. Suicide was very popular, for if a man were tried and condemned he forfeited his estate and was debarred from private burial. But if he passed sentence on himself by self-destruction, his will was respected and the body interred.

  Ever since he heard the grim report, Pilate had trouble shaking it from consciousness, for there were alarming parallels in his case. For the first time now, the possibility had at least to be considered. If he were to commit suicide rather than trusting the dubious mercies of Tiberius, Procula would inherit his estate untouched and could resume her place in Roman society without disgrace. Her own grandfather had taken his life by swallowing gypsum to permanently soothe his stomach pains, but the suicide had not tarnished his reputation or the family’s.

  As they traveled northward up the Italian boot, a feeling of utter dejection swept Pilate. Fear of the princeps was being replaced with a sense of total futility at having dedicated the best decade in his life to govern a province from which he was now returning under a cloud. Life was a tedious exercise in frustration, a training ground for meaninglessness, an arena without significance. Perhaps suicide was not only a viable option, but the proper one. Even something of nobility, a sacrifice for the security of Procula.

  They now reached Caudium, where Pilate’s aged relatives rejoiced to see them again. But it was a reunion sobered by news of what lay ahead for Pilate. He himself put on a front of unconcern for his family’s benefit and shared no dark thoughts with them or Procula. Inwardly, however, he was struggling with a personal battle of decision. Before landing in Italy, he had given no thought to self-destruction, but after the dismal reports of Tiberius’s temperament and the pessimistic calculation of his own future, he was less surprised at the arguments he could muster in its favor.

  Pilate spent no more than a week at Caudium, lest he jeopardize his case for failing to announce his arrival. Generally, the “three-month rule” applied to returning governors. Once their successors arrived, ex-prefects were to leave their provinces at once and not delay their return to Rome longer than three months. His time was nearly up.

  He decided that Procula should stay in the security of Caudium. In case anything happened to him, the Pontii were to conduct her safely to the Proculeii in Rome. Despite Procula’s remonstrances, he insisted on facing his fate alone. They kissed very tenderly, very emotionally at parting, a bittersweet reminder that their love had not really suffered through the ten and a half years of their marriage.

  Without her knowledge, Pilate had deposited his last will and testament with the municipal magistrate of Caudium. Everything was now arranged to suit either alternative: confrontation with the princeps, or a lonely suicide.

  Soon after he left Caudium, however, that issue was resolved. Pilate finally made up his mind. A sense of personal dignity and a hope bound up with his love for Procula decided the matter. He would fight for his honor; he would face the
princeps.

  Tiberius was no longer near Rome, he had learned, but sojourning in a villa at Misenum on the Bay of Naples. And the bay was nearby, just thirty miles west of Caudium across the Apennines. With one aide and several large bundles of documents, he made the short trip on the Ides of March in 37 A.D. After a day of rugged travel, the familiar view unfolded despite the blustery gray weather: the majesty of Mount Vesuvius to the left, Neapolis before them, and the port of Puteoli further west. Since leaving that harbor a decade earlier, Pilate had now come full circle.

  Just around the bend of the bay’s shoreline beyond Puteoli, the promontory of Misenum pointed its slim finger toward Capri. The jewel ringing that finger was the palatial villa where Tiberius was staying. As they drew up to the gates of the mansion, his aide informed the captain of a praetorian squad at the entrance, “Pontius Pilatus, praefectus Iudaeae, voluit colloqui cum Naevio Sertorio Macrone, praefecto praetoria.” His contact for arranging an audience with Tiberius would be the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Naevius Sertorius Macro, the man who had cleverly baited the trap which snared his predecessor Sejanus.

  One of the guards delivered the message. They waited. Suddenly a dozen couriers streaked out of the villa, mounted their horses, and took off in a furious gallop toward Puteoli. Pilate and his aide looked astonished. Inside the mansion, a welling sound of excitement now reached the level of a general din. Then wild cheering broke out. Baffled, Pilate asked the guards, “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” replied one of them. “Unless the doctor’s announced that the princeps is recovering—”

  “He’s ill?”

  “Of course. Haven’t you heard? Hard breathing all week…fever. He wouldn’t doctor though.”