The Redemption of Pontius Pilate

by Lewis Ben Smith

  The captives howled in protest—three of them did, anyway; the fourth one had taken a hard blow to the skull and was knocked senseless, although Pilate imagined he would wake soon enough when the nails drove through his wrists. The lictors kept them bound and guarded while the soldiers procured the necessary wood to do the grim deed. As for Pilate and Tiberius, they paused there by the road and ordered their cook to prepare lunch for the entire party. They were just tucking into the hastily prepared meal as the soldiers began nailing up the offending bandits. Pilate found their screams made his meal that much more enjoyable, and when he looked over at Tiberius, seated across from him on the back of the supply wagon, he saw that the dour old general was actually smiling. Not only that, the clouds were parting, and the sun was starting to shine again. Things were definitely looking up!

  That was their only real adventure on the road homeward. The journey across the Alps took three days, and the weather held nicely, although the high passes were bitter cold. But the mild winter south of the mountains gave way to a glorious spring as they neared the city of Romulus, and the local inns got more and more comfortable and luxurious as they got nearer to home.

  Tiberius owned a pleasant, if small, villa just north of the city; the party stopped there for the night just before their arrival. They sent the lictors ahead to inform the Senate of their arrival, and Pilate had the chance for a long and luxurious soak, followed by a massage and scraping of his tired skin. Clad in a crisp white toga, with a goblet of excellent Samnian wine at his elbow, he felt like a true Roman gentleman again. Tiberius joined him a short while later, likewise cleaned off, freshly shaven, and clad in a fine toga. Pilate rose to greet him, and then they reclined on the couch together as a servant brought in a tray of sweet fruits and fresh baked bread.

  “Tomorrow you will enter Rome and discuss the date of my triumph with the Senate,” Tiberius said. “I also want you to take a letter to the Emperor for me, and receive any messages he may wish to send. Once you have reported back to me, you may tend to your own affairs for a few days. But do not leave the city—I want you to march with me in my triumphal parade!”

  Pilate nodded. By longstanding tradition, Tiberius could not cross the pomerium, the city’s sacred boundary, until after he celebrated his many victories in Germania. Crossing that line beforehand would require him to lay down his imperium, the authority by which he governed his legions, and disqualify him from having a triumph. So, like many a victorious Roman before him, he would wait outside the city walls for the day the Senate had appointed, receiving visits from his clients and taking care of his affairs through proxies.

  Pilate wondered if Tiberius’ wife, Julia, would attend the parade. Probably not, he thought. Her dislike of her husband and his distaste for her was well known to all. At one point her infidelities had become so flagrant that Tiberius had fled to Greece in embarrassment and loathing, and had to be coaxed back to Rome by the Emperor himself. So Pilate did not even bother asking if there was any message for her. He and his patron dined together in comfort and elegance, and after some light conversation they retired for the evening.

  The next morning Pilate dressed himself in his full Legate’s uniform, but left off his military decorations—he would wear them publicly for the first time in Tiberius’ triumphal parade. He took the letters from Tiberius to the Senate and to the Emperor and headed toward Rome. The white walls and teaming markets rose up before him like a mystical kingdom in a story of old, and he had to pause and drink in the view. What better lot was there in the world than to be a Roman in this age? The civil wars of the past were done, and the peace Augustus had so carefully forged through a combination of war and diplomacy had created a time of unprecedented prosperity.

  Soon he found himself riding toward the Forum, with the dome of the Senate building coming into sight. A few in the crowd recognized him, and as he mounted the steps toward the Curia Julia where the Senate met, a familiar face came down to greet him.

  “Proculus!” he exclaimed. “How good to see you!”

  “And you likewise, Lucius Pontius!” said the older man. He and Pilate’s father had been longtime friends, and he had helped Pilate conduct his campaign for praetor before Pilate left for Germania.

  “How is my family?” Pilate said. “I have not had a letter in several months.”

  “Your father is not well,” said his old comrade. “He has lost weight, and his color is off. I suspect that he may have the Crab’s Disease, to tell you the truth. It will do him good to see you again. Your brother Cornelius is in Sicily and your two younger brothers are serving with the army in Africa. Your sister Pontia has married a wealthy Senator twice her age, and is expecting her first child.”

  Pilate nodded. “And Cornelia?” he asked.

  The old man looked at him sadly. “She was married to my son last year,” he said. “Such a delightful girl! But she died last month after delivering a son. My household, and your father’s, are still in mourning for her.”

  Pilate hung his head for a moment. Little Cornelia, gone so soon! She had been only seventeen when he left two years before, still ecstatic over her betrothal to Marcus Proculus. She had been the prettiest of Pilate’s siblings, and his favorite. He swallowed hard, and looked up again. The old man was regarding him sadly.

  “That is a difficult blow,” Pilate said. “But I must mourn her later. My business right now is with the Senate, and then with the Emperor.”

  “A word to the wise, young Lucius,” said Proculus. “I would reverse the order of those visits if I were you. Augustus is not the man he once was. At one time, your seeing the Senators first would have been considered perfectly proper and in accordance with the mos maorum. But age has not been kind to Augustus, and he is greedy for news of his kin. But after you have discharged your official business, perhaps you could dine with me and my family?”

  “It will have to be tomorrow,” Pilate said. “Tiberius wants me to return with news before the day is done.”

  Proculus nodded. “I assumed as much. I shall look for you tomorrow evening. But do try to see your father soon! He has been most concerned about you.”

  Pilate nodded and turned his steps from the Forum toward the Palatine, where Augustus’ simple home was located. He remembered his last visit to the man, two years before, and found that he was not nearly as nervous. Two years had passed, by the calendar, but he felt at least a decade older than he had that day. No wonder, he thought. He had been an ambitious and rather callow youth of twenty-six when he had galloped away to join Tiberius at Tolosa. Now he was a legion commander and a decorated hero of Rome, with one major battle and numerous skirmishes under his belt. He did not forget the awesome power of Augustus, but he felt that he could at least hold his head up in the man’s presence now.

  There was a long line of clients waiting, but Pilate’s uniform and the source of his message ushered him to the head of the line immediately. A servant showed him into Augustus’ small receiving chamber, and he was shocked at his first sight of the Emperor of Rome. The man had physically shrunk since Pilate last saw him. Caesar had never been a big man, but he had always been well-proportioned and broad-shouldered, and carried himself so rigidly upright that he appeared to be larger than he actually was.

  But that was no longer true. Augustus’ hair was now snow-white and visibly thinning, the lines on his face deeper, and his eyes a bit more unfocused than they had been. The razor-sharp mind that had forged a failing Republic into a functional Empire seemed to be slowing down visibly, like an exhausted horse near the end of its race. He sat on his curule chair, his hands in his lap, staring downward, appearing to be almost asleep.

  But then the old man looked up and saw Pilate, and the vision of decrepitude vanished like a dream. The shoulders squared, the eyes focused, the head snapped upright, and the old Caesar was back, with all of his majesty and humility. “Lucius Pontius Pilate!” he exclaimed. “Back from the wars, I see, and looking a good bit more seasoned than w
hen I saw you last. My son says you acquitted yourself very well against the Cheruscii and their allies, but I have not had a letter from him in many weeks. Do you bring me news?”

  Pilate saluted and stepped forward. “Yes, Caesar,” he said. “Tiberius has returned to Rome, and waits outside the pomerium until after his triumph. He asked me to bring this missive to you.” He handed the letter to the Emperor.

  Caesar broke the seal and unrolled it, reading through its contents quickly and nodding here and there. When he finished, he gave a snort. “Just like the boy!” he said. “Two terse pages of official business, and not a word to me or his mother about how he is actually doing! I assume you rode with him on the homeward journey, Legate. Tell me, how fares my son?”

  Pilate thought for a moment. “Tiberius is a hard man to read, Caesar. He is a rather morose person, at least in my experience of him. Brave, yes, and thoroughly competent at all he undertakes to do. But he does not allow any of us junior officers to be—well, to be his friends. All things considered, though, he seems to be feeling well enough.”

  Caesar nodded. “A man in power must choose his friends very carefully, young Pilate,” he said. “I taught Tiberius that when he was very young, and he learned the lesson well. Too well, in fact. I have been careful in my friends, but I have still had them—a few, at least. None as close as my dear Marcus Agrippa, now gone from us for far too long! But a man must have a few choice individuals with whom he can occasionally set aside ceremony and simply enjoy life with. That is a lesson I fear that my Tiberius has not yet learned. Well, I suppose you must go and deliver his letters to the Senate now, eh?”

  “Yes, sir, I must. May I bear any reply to Tiberius from you?” he asked.

  “No,” said the Emperor. “But you may bear me to him, when your business with the Senate is done. It has been too long since I sat on a horse and got outside these infernal walls! Come back for me in three hours. Perhaps I shall be done with all these pestilential hangers-on by then.” Pilate bowed and turned to go, when the Emperor spoke again. “By the way, young man, you know that protocol really should have taken you to the Senate first, before you came to see me.”

  Pilate paused. Old and frail or not, the man did not miss a trick!

  “I suppose that is true, my Emperor,” he said. “But Tiberius is their political superior. He is your son.”

  The old man laughed, and the weight of the years seemed to fall from his shoulders. “By Jove, I like you, young fellow! Come back soon, and escort me to my son!” he said.

  Pilate delivered Tiberius’ message to the Senate and spoke with a number of the men there, discussing the details of the triumphal march and taking several letters from various senators to deliver. Then he was asked to give a personal account of the events in Germania over the last two years, and answered some pointed questions from a couple of curious politicians. After two hours, he extricated himself from the crowd and returned to the Palatine Hill. The line of clients outside the door was gone, and two saddled horses waited out front. Something struck him as odd about one of them, but it took him a minute to realize what it was. The horse had three toes on each foot instead of a normal hoof!

  “Do you like Toes?” a familiar voice said.

  Pilate turned and saluted the Emperor as Augustus came down the steps, wearing a crimson and purple mantle over a gorgeously trimmed bronze breastplate.

  “I had heard that the Divus Julius rode a three-toed horse into battle, but I did not know there were any of them left in Rome!” Pilate replied.

  “Caesar’s Toes was this horse’s grandsire,” said Augustus. “It is a difficult trait to breed—perhaps one out of every five colts from a three-toed horse will inherit it. But they are the most sure-footed and courageous mounts in the world. I don’t know where old Sulla found the first one, but he gave it as a gift to my divine father when he set out for his first provincial governor’s seat, in Spain. This old fellow is probably going to be the last of the bloodline—he has sired dozens of colts, but none of the ones with toes instead of hooves lived to adulthood.”

  The two men mounted and rode down the streets toward the north gate of the city, flanked by six guards from the Emperor’s own household. Pilate was astonished to see how quickly the bustling street cleared as they advanced. They reached the gate in a matter of ten minutes, when the same ride would have taken Pilate nearly an hour had he been alone.

  The Emperor was in a loquacious mood, and the afternoon’s conversation was one Pilate would never forget. Every temple, every hill or clump of woods, seemed to hold some significance for the old Emperor, and he told Pilate stories of his adoptive father, Gaius Julius Caesar, and his archrival for the succession, Marcus Antonius. He explained how it was his firm belief that Cleopatra, last of the Ptolemy Queens of Egypt, was in fact a dark sorceress who cast a spell on Rome’s greatest soldier. “He was a man’s man, was Antony, and a Roman of the highest ancestry!” said the Emperor. “And yet she unmanned him and turned him into a simpering Eastern potentate! He wore eye make-up and worshipped snakes and baboons, and according to the palace servants, she made him crawl on all fours like a beast while she rode on his back drinking wine from a golden goblet!”

  “Remarkable!” said Pilate.

  “I was never so glad to see anything as I was to see her lying there with two fang marks on her breast,” Caesar continued. “What my father saw in her I will never know, but I saw a great threat to Rome, and to me. I lived in fear of her dark witchcraft the whole time I was in Egypt!”

  “Whatever happened to the son she had by Caesar?” asked Pilate, and then snapped his mouth shut in horror. Whatever had possessed him to ask such a tasteless question?

  But Augustus did not seem offended. “Many people have wanted to know the answer to that question, lad, but you are one of the very few who has had the audacity to actually ask me!” he said with a chuckle. “The truth is, I do not know. I don’t even know for sure that he was Caesar’s child, although his Greek tutors assured me that he was, and that he looked so much like Caesar as to be his twin! He slipped out of Alexandria in the confusion of the war, and was never seen again. I like to think that perhaps he made off to the desert and is living somewhere in peace, perhaps as a shepherd—or maybe as the prince of a nomadic tribe. Certainly, wherever he is, I wish him well. If Caesar was indeed his father, that would make us brothers, and I could never harm a brother.” His voice trailed off, and Pilate had the distinct feeling he had just been lied to.

  Moments later they arrived at Tiberius’ villa, and he walked beside the Emperor up the stairs. Tiberius was dictating a letter to a scribe, but rose in surprise when he saw them enter.

  “Father!” he said. “You should not have come out here!’

  “Well, my boy, is not an old man allowed to come and see his son and heir after an absence of two years?” the Emperor asked.

  “Of course,” said Tiberius somewhat stiffly. “I was merely concerned for your health—”

  “Nonsense!” snorted Augustus. “I know I am seventy-three years old, but I am not going to break in half just because I get on a horse. Everyone around me has turned into a gaggle of clucking old hens here lately!”

  Tiberius actually smiled. “That is one thing I have never been accused of before!” he said. “So how are you, my father?”

  Augustus said, “I am tired, my son. I have carried the weight of this Empire on my back for nearly forty-five years now, and I am ready to pass it on soon, I think. Your man Pilate was kind enough to escort me here when I asked him. He seems a decent fellow, if you ask me.”

  “Lucius Pontius has been quite useful to me,” said Tiberius. “And I have kept him from his family far too long. Pilate, why don’t you leave me with my father so you can go visit yours? I will summon you when I need you.”

  Pilate bowed. “Thank you, General,” he said. With that he left the two most powerful men in the world to their own devices, and spurred his horse toward Rome and his family.
r />   CHAPTER THREE

  The next few weeks passed quickly for Pilate, as he reconnected with his family and coordinated the preparations for Tiberius’ triumphal parade. Only two of the legions that had fought under Tiberius in Germania were in Italy—the rest remained on the frontier under Germanicus. But they would march in the parade, following behind the ancient triumphator’s chariot and their mounted officers. Pilate would ride in the first rank of those officers, directly behind Tiberius himself. Behind the legionaries would come the captives—not just the five thousand that had been captured in the battle Pilate took part in, but another ten thousand from Tiberius’ first few years in Germania, including two kings and four tribal chieftains. The more valuable captives would be held in Rome as hostages; the ringleaders would be strangled in the Temple of Mars following the parade, and the common soldiers and civilians sold as slaves. Behind the unhappy captives would come wagon after wagon of captured treasure, idols, and weapons of war. Triumphs were the highlight of the season for the masses of everyday Roman citizens; men who had never been near a battlefield could feel, for a moment, that they had taken part in Rome’s victories.

  Pilate was enjoying the time in Rome, seeing his family again. His father was clearly not long for this world, but was determined to see his son riding in Tiberius’ parade, so Pilate rented a box window in a friend’s house overlooking the parade route, where the sick man could sit in comfort. Pilate also was enjoying spending time with the family of Gaius Proculus Porcius—most especially with his eighteen-year-old daughter, Procula Porcia. She was a classic Roman beauty with hair as dark as night and lips as red as strawberries in the high summer, but she was also highly intelligent and politically astute. She had several suitors at the moment, but was committed to no one, and Pilate was planning to ask for her hand once the triumph was over and done.