CHAPTER LX.

JESUS BEFORE PILATE.

"Per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat."-TAC. Ann. xv. 44.

"SUFFERED under Pontius Pilate "-so, in every creed of Christendom, is the unhappy name of the Roman Procurator handed down to eternal execration. Yet the object of introducing that name was not to point a moral, but to fix an epoch; and, in point of fact, of all the civil and ecclesiastical rulers before whom Jesus was brought to judgment, Pilate was the least guilty of malice and hatred, the most anxious, if not to spare His agony, at least to save His life.

What manner of man was this in whose hands were placed, by power from above, the final destinies of the Saviour's life? Of his origin, and of his antecedents before A.D. 26, when he became the sixth Procurator of Judæa, but little is known. In rank he belonged to the ordo equester, and he owed his appointment to the influence of Sejanus. His name "Pontius" seems to point to a Samnite extraction; his cognomen "Pilatus" to a warlike ancestry. His praenomen, if he had one, has not been preserved. In Judæa he had acted with all the haughty violence and insolent cruelty of a typical

Roman governor. Scarcely had he been well installed as Procurator, when, allowing his soldiers to bring with them by night the silver eagles and other insignia of the legions from Cæsarea to the Holy City, he excited a furious outburst of Jewish feeling against an act which they regarded as idolatrous profanation. For five days and nights-often lying prostrate on the bare ground -they surrounded and almost stormed his residence at Cæsarea with tumultuous and threatening entreaties, and could not be made to desist on the sixth, even by the peril of immediate and indiscriminate massacre at the hands of the soldiers whom he sent to surround them. He had then sullenly given way, and this foretaste of the undaunted and fanatical resolution of the people with whom he had to deal, went far to embitter his whole administration with a sense of overpowering disgust.1

The outbreak of the Jews on a second occasion was perhaps less justifiable, but it might easily have been avoided, if Pilate would have studied their character a little more considerately, and paid more respect to their dominant superstition. Jerusalem seems to have always suffered, as it does very grievously to this day, from a bad and deficient supply of water. To remedy this inconvenience, Pilate undertook to build an aqueduct, by which water could be brought from the "Pools of Solomon." Regarding this as a matter of public benefit, he applied to the purpose some of the money from the "Corban," or sacred treasury, and the people rose in furious myriads to resent this secular appropriation of their sacred fund. Stung by their insults and reproaches, Pilate disguised a number of his soldiers in Jewish costume, and sent them among the mob, with

1 Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, § 1; B. J. ii. 9, §§ 2, 3.

staves and daggers concealed under their garments, to punish the ringleaders. Upon the refusal of the Jews! to separate quietly, a signal was given, and the soldiers carried out their instructions with such hearty good-will, that they wounded and beat to death not a few both of the guilty and the innocent, and created so violent a tumult that many perished by being trodden to death i under the feet of the terrified and surging mob.1 Thus, in a nation which produced the sicarii, Pilate had given a fatal precedent of sicarian conduct; the Assassins had received from their Procurator an example of the use of political assassination.

A third seditious tumult must still more have embittered the disgust of the Roman Governor for his subjects, by showing him how impossible it was to live among such a people-even in a conciliatory spiritwithout outraging some of their sensitive prejudices. In the Herodian palace at Jerusalem, which he occupied during the festivals, he had hung some gilt shields dedicated to Tiberius. In the speech of Agrippa before the Emperor Caius, as narrated by Philo, this act is attributed to wanton malice; but since, by the king's own admission, the shields were perfectly plain, and were merely decorated with a votive inscription, it is fair to suppose that the Jews had taken offence at what Pilate simply intended for a harmless private ornament; and one which, moreover, he could hardly

1 These two instances are twice related by Josephus, Antt. xviii. 3, §§ 1, 2; B. J. ii. 9, §§ 2, 3, 4. Ewald has precariously conjectured that the "tower of Siloam" which fell and crushed eighteen people may have been connected with these works, and so may have furnished ground to those who desired to interpret that accident as a Divine judgment (Gesch. v. 40; Luke xiii. 4). It has been suggested with some probability that the real disgust of the Jews against the plan for building an aqueduct was due to a belief that its construction would render the city less easy of defence.

DISTURBANCES UNDER PILATE.

363

remove without some danger of offending the gloomy and suspicious Emperor to whose honour they were dedicated. Since he would not give way, the chief men of the nation wrote a letter of complaint to Tiberius. himself. It was a part of Tiberius's policy to keep the provinces contented, and his masculine intellect despised the obstinacy which would risk an insurrection rather than sacrifice a whim. He therefore reprimanded Pilate,. and ordered the obnoxious shields to be transferred from Jerusalem to the Temple of Augustus at Cæsarea.

.1

The latter incident is related by Philo only ; and besides these three outbreaks, we hear in the Gospels. of some wild tumult in which Pilate had mingled the blood of the Galilæans with their sacrifices. He was finally expelled from his Procuratorship in consequenceof an accusation preferred against him by the Samaritans, who complained to Lucius Vitellius, the Legate of Syria, that he had wantonly attacked, slain, and executed a number of them who had assembled on Mount Gerizim

by the invitation of an impostor possibly Simon. Magus-who promised to show them the Ark and sacred vessels of the Temple, which, he said, had been concealed there by Moses. The conduct of Pilate seems on this occasion to have been needlessly prompt. and violent; and although, when he arrived at Rome, he found that Tiberius was dead, yet even Gaius refused to reinstate him in his government, thinking it no doubt a bad sign that he should thus have become unpleasantly involved with the people of every single district in his narrow government. Sejanus had shown

1

Legat. ad Caium, § 38. Philo calls him Bapuunvis, and thy qúoir ἀκαμπὴς καὶ μετὰ τοῦ αὐθάδους ἀμείλικτος.

* Jos. Antt. xviii. 4, § 1. This was a Messianic expectation (Ewald, Gesch. Isr. v. 171, E. Tr.).

the most utter dislike against the Jews, and Pilate probably reflected his patron's antipathies.1

Such was Pontius Pilate, whom the pomps and perils of the great yearly festival had summoned from his usual residence at Cæsarea Philippi to the capital of the nation which he detested, and the head-quarters of a fanaticism which he despised. At Jerusalem he occu pied one of the two gorgeous palaces which had been erected there by the lavish architectural extravagance of the first Herod. It was situated in the Upper City to the south-west of the Temple Hill, and like the similar building at Cæsarea, having passed from the use of the provincial king to that of the Roman governor, was called Herod's Praetorium.2 It was one of those luxurious abodes, "surpassing all description," which were in accordance with the tendencies of the age, and on which Josephus dwells with ecstasies of admiration.3 Between its colossal wings of white marble called respectively Cæsareum and Agrippeum, in the usual spirit of Herodian flattery to the Imperial house-was an open space commanding a noble view of Jerusalem, adorned with sculptured porticos and columns of many-coloured marble, paved with rich mosaics, varied with fountains and reservoirs, and green promenades which furnished a delightful asylum to flocks of doves. Externally

1 See Salvador, Dominion Romaine, i. 428.

2 Acts xxiii. 35. Verres occupied an old palace of Hiero at Syracuse (Cic. Verr. ii. 5, 12).

3 Jos. B. J. v. 4, § 4: παντὸς λόγου κρείσσων ; id., οὐθ' ἑρμηνεῦσαι δυνατὸν ἀξίως τὰ βασίλεια.

4 See Jos. B. J. ii. 14, §8; 15, § 5, from which it appears that Florus usually occupied this palace. For the Caesareum and the Agrippeum, ses id. i. 21, §1, δύο τοὺς μεγίστους καὶ περικαλλεστάτους οἴκους οἷς οὐδὲ ναὸς τῇ συνεκρίνετο ; id. v. 4, § 4, ἀδιήγητος ἡ ποικιλία τῶν λίθων ἦν.—Keim Eine stolze Residenz für einen römischen Ritter] has partly reproduced the description of Josephus, III. ii. 2, 361.