Pontius Pilate: A Novel

by Paul L Maier

  But no one was more jubilant than Pilate and Procula. The madman who for nearly four years had represented a standing threat to his freedom, if not his life, was no more. With tears of happy gratitude he embraced his friend Chaerea. Pilate was saved.

  Chaerea produced “The Dagger” notebook and showed Pilate one of the most recent entries in the list of prominent equestrians. It read:

  Pontius Pilatus?

  Chapter 25

  Understandably, Pilate had long since developed republican inclinations. His decade of trying to please the irascible Tiberius, followed by four fearful years under Caligula had buried his erstwhile monarchism. Many an evening discussing politics with Cassius Chaerea had aided in the republicanization of Pontius Pilate, and he now took pride in his kinship to Pontius Aquila, the conspirator against Caesar.

  Just after the assassination, Pilate did what lobbying he could among his equestrian and senatorial friends to urge a restoration of the Republic. And now his and many other personal efforts seemed rewarded. The Senate convened in extraordinary session to declare the end of the Roman Empire, that near century which had witnessed the rule of Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, and now, by far the worst, Caligula. In its place, the conscript fathers voted to revive democracy and restore the Roman Republic.

  Pilate was present as guest of the Senate through the influence of his now-important friend, Cassius Chaerea, Rome’s man of the hour. When the tribune-hero asked the triumphant consuls for the new watchword, they replied “Liberty,” to the wild cheering of the senators. The glorious day of political freedom had dawned.

  Meanwhile, unknown to Chaerea, Pilate, or any of the republicans, fate was calling to center stage the forgotten man of Roman politics, Caligula’s Uncle Claudius, who had spent the fifty years of his life, not really waiting in the wings, but acting out a ludicrous sideshow of his own. Spindly-legged and wobbly from a childhood infantile paralysis, Claudius had other handicaps, including mental blocks and a speech defect which made him stammer and appear simple-minded. Tiberius had named his nephew “Clau-Clau-Claudius” and given him no serious consideration as his successor, since the imperial family thought him merely a biological embarrassment. Caligula had treated him as court buffoon, a role Claudius was only too happy to play, for otherwise he would have been put to death as a rival to the throne. But, in fact, Claudius was no fool. His personal impediments had driven him into the seclusion of scholarly pursuits, and, tutored by the great Livy, he wrote important works on Etruscan and Carthaginian history, as well as Roman law.

  Claudius thought he himself would not survive Caligula’s assassination. During the bloody turmoil that day, he had fled into the palace and hid. Later, when the praetorians were ransacking the place, they chanced to notice two feet sticking out beneath a curtain in an upstairs alcove. The feet, of course, belonged to Claudius, who expected instant death. Instead, the troops whisked him off to the Castra Praetoria and hailed him as the new emperor. The guards were supported by many in the populace who feared that a democratic republic would only return Rome to bloody civil war.

  But the Senate would not back down at a time of unparalleled opportunity. The conscript fathers dispatched two tribunes to the Castra, who advised Claudius not to assume the principate but yield to the Senate, which would stop him by military force if he had not learned his lesson from Caligula’s fate. Claudius wavered, but since he was safe with the praetorians, he temporized for the moment.

  Enter King Herod Agrippa, adventurer, opportunist, fisher-in-troubled-waters, and now alterer-of-Roman-history. When he learned that Claudius was being detained at the Castra Praetoria, he hurried over to join him at the camp. Both the same age, Claudius and Agrippa had been educated together at the palace school.

  Claudius was at the point of yielding to the Senate, when Agrippa arrived and urged him not to let power slip from his hands. “History is summoning you, beloved Claudius,” he said. “The blood of the Caesars pulses in your veins and must not be frustrated. You were born to rule. What will future ages say of a Claudius who was too selfish to guide Rome with his moderation and wisdom?” Claudius promised to think about it.

  After Agrippa left the Castra, he received a summons from the Senate. Quickly perfuming his hair as if he had just been called away from a banquet instead of visiting Claudius, he appeared before the senators. They requested his advice, as a visiting sovereign, on the present constitutional crisis. Shrewdly, Agrippa appeared pro-Senate, but argued that the Urban Cohorts, on whom the fathers were relying in the coming showdown with Claudius, were no match for the praetorians. “Instead of declaring civil war,” he urged, “why not send a delegation to Claudius and negotiate your differences?” The Senate agreed. Naturally, Agrippa was one of the ambassadors dispatched to the Praetorian Camp.

  Before Claudius met with the delegation, Agrippa got his ear privately. He reported the Senate’s confusion and urged him to stand his ground, with diplomacy. Then Agrippa joined the rest of the delegation to echo the Senate’s line. Claudius delivered a handsome reply, promising he would be princeps in name only, and would fully involve the Senate in governing Rome. Having experienced the terror of life under his nephew, he could never be a tyrant.

  At dawn the next day, the Senate met to hear the reply. Again Pilate was present, this time as a member of Chaerea’s committee to restore the Republic. Unlike many of their fellow praetorians, Chaerea, Sabinus, and others refused to consider Claudius, and now they strove to firm up the Senate in its resolve to restore the Republic. Pilate darted between benches in the chamber, trying to hold communications together among republican senators.

  But their cause faced an ominous development. The Urban Cohorts on which the Senate was relying grew restless and impatient. Finally they demanded that the Senate choose a chief executive, yes, a princeps. Several candidates other than Claudius were discussed, with little enthusiasm. The more realistic senators, seeing what was inevitable, got up from their benches and hastened out of the chamber to be the first to congratulate Claudius on his increasingly obvious accession.

  In dejection, Pilate watched Chaerea hurry to the rostrum to remind the senators that they had just dispatched one tyrant, and should not create another. Barely one hundred senators were left in the chamber—the full body numbered some six hundred—and the Urban Cohorts now raised their standards and marched off to swear allegiance to Claudius. With no military support, the republican cause collapsed. Slowly, mournfully, the remaining conscript fathers rose and filed out of the Senate chamber.

  Pilate walked over to Cassius Chaerea. In their mutual depression, no words were possible. The restored Roman Republic had lasted barely forty-eight hours. Pilate clasped his friend’s shoulder and they finally left the Senate hall. As the last to leave, they were, in a sense, the last two citizens of the “Second Roman Republic.”

  Claudius, with Agrippa at his side, was borne in triumph over to the Palatine, hailed by plaudits from the fickle Roman masses. As one of his first official acts, the now-emperor Claudius rewarded the man who was so instrumental in raising him to empire. In a speech before the Senate, he bestowed the rank of consul on Agrippa, and then announced: “Finally, beloved Friend, we name you king not only of those territories which you now hold, but also of Judea as well. We have recalled the prefect Marullus. You will recognize that you are now king over all the lands formerly ruled by your grandfather Herod the Great.”

  Agrippa expressed profound gratitude to Claudius and the Senate, promising that Judea would be a most loyal ally of Rome. He then returned in triumph to Palestine, where the Jews welcomed him with an enthusiasm unparalleled since the days of the Maccabean princes. His first act after arriving in Jerusalem was to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and dedicate to the temple the golden chain which Caligula had given him.

  From his home near the Proculeius mansion, Pilate surveyed these developments with less the dispassion of a spectator and more the involvement of a citizen. It was not jealousy at Agripp
a’s phenomenal success which haunted him so much as the apparent destruction of the republican cause. Claudius might well have yielded to a restored senatorial republic had this foreign opportunist not tutored him to empire. An alien king had changed the course of Roman history. He suspected the Republic would never have another chance.

  And Pilate lost a close friend in the process. Claudius had demanded a test vote in the case of Cassius Chaerea. Everyone in Rome, including the new emperor, agreed that Chaerea was a hero, that his tyrannicide had been a splendid deed for the state. But, in the grotesque political calculation of the time, the hero had to die. Claudius put it this way: “I am pleased that Caligula is gone. I am displeased that a princeps has been assassinated.” As an ominous precedent, it could not go unpunished. A deterrent for Claudius’s own safety was necessary. Chaerea would have to be sacrificed. The Senate agreed.

  The tribune bore his fate with Stoic dignity, but Pilate wept for his friend as he accompanied him to the place of execution.

  “Come off it, Pilate. Rome needs a ‘martyr’ about now anyway,” he quipped. “I was prepared for this when I killed the tyrant.”

  “But the state needs you, Chaerea.”

  “Sorry. In the words of Cato, ‘I don’t want to survive Liberty.’”

  The tribune Lupus, a fellow conspirator, was also being marched out to execution, but he broke down in tears.

  “Stop it, Lupus!” Chaerea remonstrated. “Put on your thick skin and play the wolf!” It was a pun on lupus, Latin for wolf.

  A large crowd had gathered at the place of execution. Chaerea looked down at the executioner, a smaller man than he, and said, “Tell me, lad. Are you an old hand at this sort of thing, or is this the first time you’ve held a sword?”

  “I’ve had a little practice,” he admitted. “Remember, I also worked for Caligula.”

  “There’s a good chap. But do me a favor—Pilate, can I borrow that sword for the last time?” Chaerea had given him the sword with which he had dispatched Caligula.

  “Here, lad. Use this one.”

  “Why?”

  “It has sentimental attachment. So long, Pilate. See you in the Elysian Fields. And you, Lupus, if I hear one yelp out of you, I’ll haunt you to Hades and back. See how easily it’s done now. Lay on, lad. It’s a privilege to die for the Republic!”

  Chaerea bared his neck. It was severed in one blow. Lupus, who could not match that brand of courage, stuck his neck out gingerly. His execution required several strokes.

  A revulsion at these unnecessary deaths swept Rome almost immediately. In remorse, Claudius tried to undo what had been done by releasing and restoring to office Chaerea’s fellow conspirator Sabinus, who was scheduled to die. But Sabinus thought his survival would be a breach of loyalty to his dead comrades, so he killed himself.

  The progress from martyrdom to canonization was rapid. The Roman people showered gifts on the relatives of the dead conspirators and sacrificed to their shades, pleading with them to be gracious rather than vengeful at the gross public ingratitude.

  To the consummate relief of Rome and the entire Empire, Claudius soon proved to be a decent and surprisingly able emperor, as finally even Pilate had to admit. Grandiloquently named Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the one-time court jester collaborated well with the Senate, as he had promised, and made that body more representative. He abolished the universally detested charge of maiestas to avoid any future legal reigns of terror. He introduced much-needed centralization and administrative efficiency in the imperial government. His program of public works improved Rome’s water supply and laced the provinces with highways and canals. Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, was reclaimed as port of Rome, which spared travelers the 140-mile trip south to Puteoli. Claudius’s foreign policy was similarly successful, and two years after his accession, he made a swift conquest of Britain. From that victory, his legions were able to bring more than sea shells back to Rome in triumph.

  Above all, under Claudius, Rome no longer seemed to thrust its politics to the center of world attention. Life in the Mediterranean could flow back into normal channels. So could Pilate’s.

  Perhaps for the first time in their marriage, Pilate and Procula knew serenity. Two-thirds of their wedded life thus far had been spent under the strain of provincial administration in Judea, the last third in the hell of uncertainty under Caligula. Pilate’s civil pension and the income from his holdings provided them a very comfortable life, particularly since Rome was enjoying increased economic prosperity. There was no expense for rearing children, a blight in their marriage to which they had become reconciled by now.

  Yet Pilate had trouble adapting to leisure. With time on his hands, the thought of standing for public office haunted him. There was no upper age limit for Roman magistrates, and he thought himself still in his late prime. He was even tempted to apply to Claudius for a position in his expanding civil service, perhaps in the department governing the provinces. The princeps needed trained officials—he was resorting to freed-men to fill many important posts in his growing bureaucracy—and Pilate could easily dispel any cloud over his record by appealing to the fact that it was Caligula who had retired him. The way from such an appointment into Claudius’s cabinet itself would be short.

  But Procula did everything possible to pierce Pilate’s projections. “What if Claudius should suddenly get ill and transform himself into a monster? The inclination seems to run in the family. Then he’d strike out against those nearest him. Have done with the government, Pilate.”

  “But Vitellius returned to politics and seems to be doing well.”

  “Only by fawning and toadying. That’s not for you. And remember that Agrippa, who is a favorite of Claudius, could still block your career.”

  “Why? He’s off in Palestine with all his ambitions fulfilled.”

  But Pilate was not really arguing with conviction. He was simply trying to reserve future alternatives for himself. Everyone must live with a few goals, a little hope, some objective for existence.

  Procula made it her responsibility to keep their day as full as possible. Aside from gladiatorial shows, which they loathed and avoided, there were the races, the theater, and many social engagements. Of greater interest to Pilate were the lectures of visiting Greek philosophers, or public readings by Roman authors of the Silver Age. He now read more than ever. And he was even able to gratify his political susceptibilities by regular visits to the Senate, where, as an ex-officeholder, he had the perennial privilege of observing. Periodically, various officials in Claudius’s bureaucracy consulted him on Eastern affairs, since Pilate was considered a resource person for questions affecting Syria and Palestine.

  Once Claudius himself called Pilate to the Palatine for a conference. It concerned, of all people, King Herod Agrippa. Claudius laid before Pilate a map of Jerusalem and studied it for some moments.

  At close range, Pilate found the princeps quite dignified in appearance. He was tall, pleasant featured, and crowned with a luxurious crop of white hair which became him. He had a slight halt to his gait, an occasional tic in his head, but he was hardly the physical and social cripple of popular repute. Rumor, apparently, had exaggerated Claudius’s garden variety of handicaps.

  “Now, Pilate, some disturbing information has reached us about Jerusalem,” he said, with only a soft slur in his elocution. “Our friend Herod Agrippa is erecting fortifications along the northern boundary of the city.” He traced his finger along the general path of the new construction which he had marked in on the map lying before them. “You should know the city, Pilate. Does this new wall have any, shall we say, military implications?”

  “Possibly, Princeps,” he admitted. “But the question is one of motivation. Which enemy would Agrippa wish to hold off? Certainly not the Rome which gave him his throne. Parthia? Only a remote possibility. And Aretas of Arabia is dead now.” Pilate studied the map further. “So I’d gather that Agrippa is building this new wall merely to e
nclose the northern suburbs, an area running from the execution hill, Golgotha, here in the west,” he pointed, “to beyond the Tower Antonia in the East.

  “Probably that’s his motivation,” Pilate continued. “But from the dimensions of the wall which you cited, there’s no question but that Jerusalem will be much stronger in the event of siege. Should it ever revolt, it would now be harder for Rome to retake the city.”

  “That seems a fair estimate of the situation,” said Claudius. “And it corresponds to my thinking. Do you have any recommendations?”

  “You know Agrippa far better than I, Princeps. Undoubtedly he’s loyal to Rome. At the same time, it might be well to have the governor of Syria make inquiries.”

  “He already has. It was Marsus who first alerted me to the wall. He’s even more concerned than you. At any rate, I’m going to write Agrippa to proceed no further on the north wall. Its present height may stand, but not a foot higher. It was good of you to come, Pilate. We may well need your advice in the future.”

  “I’m always at your service, Princeps.”

  With that the audience ended and Pilate left the palace. The news about Agrippa was rather interesting, he thought. Was militaristic ambition rearing its grisly head in Palestine? Or was the wall just an innocent example of normal Herodian construction mania? Was Claudius having second thoughts about abandoning Roman control of Judea? Or harboring qualms about his beloved Agrippa? The endless fascination of politics!

  But even more striking was the realization that for the first time in years, it was possible for Pontius Pilate to leave the Palatine without extreme depression or gnawing uncertainty. Rome was returning to respectability.