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A Brief Essay About Pontius Pilate, The Death Of Our Lord, And A Quick Glimpse Of The Emperor

[These notes are appended to a poem I just posted; but, as a History Major during my undergrad years, I am rather pleased with them, and will post them here as a prose essay.  Thank you, Doctor C--l-r, for the two courses on Ancient History that I sat in under your tutelage.]


The civil war between Pompey the Great and Julis Caesar, and the servile wars (especially that of Sparticus), likely haunted many Roman administrators---and likely those in hostile provinces that were administered by the Emperor, and governors and prefects often appointed from among the military ranks (and less likely among the governors of the settled provinces under the administration of the Senate, with officials appointed from civilian politicians).


I do not believe that Pilate feared an uprising led by Jesus.  He had already declared, most probably "according to the will of Tiberius in the name of the Senate and People of Rome," that Jesus was innocent of any wrongdoing---which must have included being innocent of starting a rebellion against Rome.  I think Pilate had more to fear from the crowd that the priests had bestirred to demand the crucifixion of Jesus.  Cicero had written (in Ad Atticum, VI:8) that Sparticus had begun his rebellion with less than fifty followers; I suspect that, due to the swollen population in Jerusalem during Passover (which was the very reason Pilate was temporarily residing there, and not in Caesarea, the provincial capitol), a good many more than fifty were demanding the death of Jesus. A rebellion from Jerusalem might have spread to Joppa or Ceasarea; and, from those ports, might have interrupted the orderly and regularly scheduled transport of Egyptian corn (wheat) from Alexandria to Rome's great seaport at Ostia.  Mark Antony and Cleopatra had attempted this in their civil war with Octavian, later to become the first emperor, Augustus (and stepfather to Tiberius).   Pilate's attempt at crowd control and avoidance of civil unrest, in Jerusalem, had, as its direct effect, the death of Jesus on the Cross.  Our Salvation was secured by His death; but that does not absolve Pilate from being condemned by his own motives and political fears.


BTW, they tell me that Pontius Pilate was not, personally, the weak and sniveling administrator so often portrayed in Biblical fiction and films.  The Emperor he served, Tiberius, was a very astute supervisor:  he selected only the most competent persons (after having them thoroughly researched), and his demands for success were excessively high:  failure, in such as position as Pilate held, could result in a death sentence.  Tiberius, a bitter old man frustrated in his choice of career and spouse (in adolescence he had wanted to be a scholar of Greek Poetry, and was very happily married, as a teenager, to Vipsania; his mother, Livia, effectively destroyed both the career ambition and the marriage) received reports daily which he poured over, collated, cross-checked, and re-read; so that he was one of the most informed Emperors of that era.  He was driven to near insanity by the loss of his scholarly career; by the knowledge that Vipsania had been given to a Senator, who impregnanted her several times (some years after her death, Tiberius ordered the arrest and incarceration of that Senator, who, after her death, had implied that she had been unfaithful to Tiberius---a base lie, given what we know of their intense marital love; the Senator was starved to death over the course of a year on Tiberius' order, and was found to have eaten straw in his final hours); and the repeated taunts of his stepfather, who constantly reminded him that he seemed very "second-rate."  This is the kind of Emperor for whom Pontius Pilate worked; an Emperor who had snuffed out the lives of many people who had disappointed him in their official capacities.  Only a prefect with some solid administrative experience and skill could have held the position in Caesare, given Tiberius' baleful and exacting scrutiny.  


 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

In some ways, I feel sad for Tiberius.  He was considered by some at the court to be what one scholar has called "autistic," until Vipsania was able to bring him out of that during their adolescence.  Although they had been betrothed as toddlers, and had not met until adolescence (Vipsania's father, fearing the excesses of the court's luxury, kept her apart from it so that she would grow up more self-reliant than most aristocratic girls); but they quickly fell in love, and their marriage was very successful.  Tiberius had only the two ambitions of Poetry (Greek) scholarship, and playing house (and making babies) with Vipsania; and, apparently, he was quite ardent at both ambitions.  Their first home was somewhat removed from removed from the palace.  They employed only one or two servants.  Vipsania did her own cooking, for the two of them (then three after Drusus was born), and her own marketing, even appearing at the market clad in a common, homespun dress and barefoot.  When her father, Agrippa (the naval commander who had defeated Antony and Cleopatra) died, he was found to have amassed a fortune greater than the Emperor's personal wealth; and Vipsania, as the oldest of his ten children, was entitled by Roman law to half of the estate, off the top, leaving the rest to divide between her nine siblings.   At this point, Livia began to interfere, compelling her husband to dissolve the marriage (for "dynastic" reasons, even though Augustus had publicly spoken against dynasties):  because Vipsania now possessed enough wealth of her own to take her and Tiberius to the island of Rhodes, considered the Poetry capitol of the Empire, where he could study Poetry for the rest of his life.  Livia disrupted that.  At the court, where and when the couple was told that they had just been compelled to divorce, Vipsania miscarried the embryo that was their second child; and the Emperor's own physician had to attend her.  After that, Tiberius spoke to his mother only once more---to instruct her to move out of the Imperial Palace after her husband had died.  He instructed the Senate not to deify either him or his mother in the way they had deified Augustus; and when, after her death, they voted a bill to do so (a bill that would not become law until he signed it), he placed the bill in a desk drawer and forgot about it.  He did not attend his mother's funeral (which was put on by her grandchildren from her sons, Tiberius' deceased brothers), but went to the office as usual and worked his regular hours.  He did attend the funeral of Vipsania, who died in her sleep peacefully of what we would call bronchitis.  Her granddaughter, Asinia, is supposed to have had an uncanny resemblance to her; and, at the funeral, Tiberius only made a single remark:  he approached Asinia, told her that she exactly resembled her grandmother at the time that he had fallen in love with her, and then he limped away and returned to the palace.  Oddly enough, on the few nights of leisure that Tiberius allowed himself, he did not engage in orgies, nor did he ever molest Asinia; but he gave lavish banquets to which scholars of Greek Poetry were invited, and were encouraged to debate certain points set forth by Tiberius.  The winner of the debate was given a cash prize; the loser was invited to return next time to try again.  It is said that the scholars were all agreed that Tiberius most likely knew more about Greek Poetry than they did, and even in old age, retained it.

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©12 December 2022 - 6:19am — J-9THXCIV