PONTIUS PILATE
_His Name._--The prænomen or first name of Pilate is not known. Rosadi
calls him Lucius, but upon what authority is not stated. His nomen or
family name indicates that he was connected either by descent or by
adoption with the gens of the Pontii, a tribe first made famous in Roman
history in the person and achievements of C. Pontius Telesinus, the
great Samnite general. A German legend, however, offers another
explanation. According to this story, Pilate was the natural son of
Tyrus, King of Mayence. His father sent him to Rome as a hostage, and
there he was guilty of murder. Afterwards he was sent to Pontus, where
he distinguished himself by subduing certain barbarian tribes. In
recognition of his services, it is said, he received the name Pontius.
But this account is a pure fabrication. It is possible that it was
invented by the 22d legion, which was assigned to Palestine at the time
of the destruction of Jerusalem, and was afterwards stationed at
Mayence. The soldiers of this legion might have been "either the bearers
of this tradition or the inventors of the fable."
It is historically almost certain that Pilate was a native of Seville,
one of the cities of Bætic Spain that enjoyed rights of Roman
citizenship. In the war of annihilation waged by Agrippa against the
Cantabrians, the father of Pilate, Marcus Pontius, acquired fame as a
general on the side of Rome. He seems to have been a renegade to the
cause of the Spaniards, his countrymen. And when Spain had been
conquered by Rome, as a reward for service, and as a mark of
distinction, he received the pilum (javelin), and from this fact his
family took the name of Pilati. This is the common explanation of the
origin of the cognomen Pilatus.
Others have sought to derive the word Pilate from _pileatus_, which,
among the Romans, was the cap worn as a badge of servitude by manumitted
slaves. This derivation would make Pontius Pilate a _libertus_, or the
descendant of one.
Of his youth, very little is known. But it is believed that, after
leaving Spain, he entered the suite of Germanicus on the Rhine and
served through the German campaigns; and that, when peace was concluded,
he went to Rome in search of fortune and in pursuit of pleasure.
_His Marriage._--Soon after his arrival in Rome, Pilate was married to
Claudia, the youngest daughter of Julia, the daughter of Augustus. Julia
was a woman of the most dissolute and reckless habits. According to
Suetonius, nothing so embittered the life of the Roman emperor as the
shameful conduct of the mother of the wife of the procurator of Judea.
He had reared her with the utmost care, had accustomed her to domestic
employments such as knitting and spinning, and had sought to inculcate
principles of purity and nobility of soul by requiring her to speak and
act openly before the family, that everything which was said and done
might be put down in a diary. His guardianship of the attentions paid
her by young men was so strict that he once wrote a letter to Lucius
Vinicius, a handsome young man of good family, in which he said: "You
have not behaved very modestly, in making a visit to my daughter at
Baiæ." Notwithstanding this good training, Julia became one of the
lewdest and coarsest women in Rome. Augustus married her first to
Marcellus; then, after the death of Marcellus, to Marcus Agrippa; and,
finally, to Tiberius. But in spite of the noble matches that had been
made for her, her lewdness and debaucheries became so notorious that
Augustus was compelled to banish her from Rome. It is said that he was
so much ashamed of her infamous conduct that for a long time he avoided
all company, and even had thoughts of putting her to death. His sorrow
and humiliation are shown from the circumstance that when one Phoebe,
a freedwoman and confidante of hers, hanged herself about the time the
decree of banishment was passed by the senate, he said: "I had rather be
the father of Phoebe than of Julia." And whenever the name of Julia
was mentioned to him, during her exile, Augustus was wont to exclaim:
"Would I were wifeless, or had childless died."[51]
Such was the character of Julia, mother-in-law of Pilate. In exile, she
bore Claudia to a Roman knight. In her fifteenth year, the young girl
met the Spaniard in Rome and was courted by him. Nothing better
illustrates the character of Pilate than his union with this woman with
whose origin and bringing up he was well acquainted. It was a servile
and lustful rather than a noble and affectionate eye which he cast upon
her. Having won the favor of Tiberius and the consent of Claudia, the
marriage was consummated. After the nuptial rites, tradition has it that
Pilate desired to follow the bride in the imperial litter; but Tiberius,
who had acted as one of the twelve witnesses required by the law, forced
him back, and drawing a paper from his bosom, handed it to him and
passed on. This paper contained his commission as procurator of Judea;
and the real object of the suit paid to Claudia was attained.
Pilate proceeded at once to Cæsarea, the headquarters of the government
of his province. His wife, who had been left behind, joined him
afterwards. Cæsar's permission to do this was a most gracious
concession, as it was not generally allowed that governors of provinces
should take their wives with them. At first it was positively forbidden.
But afterwards a _senatus consult_, which is embodied in the Justinian
text, declared it better that the wives of proconsuls and procurators
should not go with them, but ordaining that said officials might take
their wives with them provided they made themselves personally
responsible for any transgressions on their part. Notwithstanding the
numerous restrictions of Roman law and custom, it is very evident that
the wives of Roman officers frequently accompanied them to the
provinces. From Tacitus we learn that at the time of the death of
Augustus, Germanicus had his wife Agrippina with him in Germany; and
afterwards, in the beginning of the reign of Tiberius, she was also with
him in the East. Piso, the præfect of Syria, took his wife with him at
the same time. These facts are historical corroborations of the Gospel
accounts of the presence of Claudia in Jerusalem at the time of the
crucifixion and of her warning dream to Pilate concerning the fate of
the Master.
_His Procuratorship._--Pontius Pilate was the sixth procurator of Judea.
Sabinus, Coponius, Ambivus, Rufus, and Gratus had preceded him in the
government of the province. Pilate's connection with the trial and
crucifixion of Jesus will be dealt with in succeeding chapters of this
volume. Only the chief acts of his public administration, in a purely
political capacity, will be noticed here. One of the first of these acts
serves well to illustrate the reckless and tactless character of the
man. His predecessors in office had exercised great care in the matter
of the religious prejudices of the Jews. They had studiously avoided
exhibiting flags and other emblems bearing images of the emperor that
might offend the sacred sentiments of the native population. Even
Vitellius, the legate of Syria, when he was marching against the Arabian
king Aretas, ordered his troops not to carry their standards into Jewish
territory, but to march around it. Pilate, on the other hand, in
defiance of precedent and policy, caused the garrison soldiers of
Jerusalem to enter the city by night carrying aloft their standards,
blazoned with the images of Tiberius. The news of this outrage threw the
Jews into wild excitement. The people in great numbers flocked down to
Cæsarea, where Pilate was still stopping, and begged him to remove the
standards. Pilate refused; and for five days the discussion went on. At
last he became enraged, summoned the people into the race course, had
them surrounded by a detachment of soldiers, and served notice upon them
that he would have them put to death if they did not become quiet and
disperse. But, not in the least dismayed, they threw themselves upon the
ground, laid bare their necks, and, in their turn, served notice upon
Pilate that they, the children of Abraham, would rather die, and that
they would die, before they would willingly see the Holy City defiled.
The result was that Pilate finally yielded, and had the standards and
images withdrawn from Jerusalem. Such was the Roman procurator and such
the people with whom he had to deal. Thus the very first act of his
procuratorship was a blunder which embarrassed his whole subsequent
career.
A new storm burst forth when, on another occasion, Pilate appropriated
funds from the Corban or sacred treasury to complete an aqueduct for
bringing water to Jerusalem from the "Pools of Solomon." This was
certainly a most useful enterprise; and, ordinarily, would speak well
for the statesmanship and administrative ability of the procurator. But,
in this instance, it was only another exhibition of tactless behavior in
dealing with a stubborn and peculiar people. The Jews had a very great
reverence for whatever was set apart for the Corban, and they considered
it a form of awful impiety to devote its funds to secular purposes.
Pilate, we must assume, was well acquainted with their religious
scruples in this regard, and his open defiance of their prejudices was
an illustration not of courage, but of weakness in administrative
matters. Moreover, his final conduct in the matter of the aqueduct
revealed a malignant quality in the temper of the man. On one occasion
when he was getting ready to go to Jerusalem to supervise the building
of this work, he learned that the people would again importune him, as
in the case of the standards and the images. He then deliberately caused
some of his soldiers to be disguised as Jewish citizens, had them armed
with clubs and daggers, which they carried concealed beneath their upper
garments; and when the multitude approached him to make complaints and
to present their petitions, he gave a preconcerted signal, at which the
assassins beat down and cut to pieces great numbers of the helpless
crowds. Pilate was victorious in this matter; for the opposition to the
building of the aqueduct was thus crushed in a most bloody manner. But
hatred against Pilate was stirred up afresh and intensified in the
hearts of the Jews.
A third act of defiance of the religious prejudices of the inhabitants
of Jerusalem illustrates not only the obstinacy but the stupidity as
well of the deputy of Cæsar in Judea. In the face of his previous
experiences, he insisted on hanging up in Herod's palace certain gilt
shields dedicated to Tiberius. The Jews remonstrated with him in vain
for this new outrage upon their national feelings. They were all the
more indignant because they believed that he had done it, "less for the
honor of Tiberius than for the annoyance of the Jewish people." Upon the
refusal of Pilate to remove the shields, a petition signed by the
leading men of the nation, among whom were the four sons of Herod, was
addressed to the emperor, asking for the removal of the offensive
decorations. Tiberius granted the request and the shields were taken
from Jerusalem and deposited in the temple of Augustus at Cæsarea--"And
thus were preserved both the honor of the emperor and the ancient
customs of the city."[52]
The instances above cited are recounted in the works of Josephus[53] and
Philo. But the New Testament also contains intimations that Pilate was a
cruel and reckless governor in his dealings with the Jews. According to
St. Luke xiii. 1: "There were present at that season some that told him
of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices."
Nothing definite is known of this incident mentioned by the Evangelist.
But it probably refers to the fact that Pilate had put to the sword a
number of Galileans while they were offering their sacrifices at
Jerusalem.
_His Character._--The estimates of the character of Pilate are as varied
as the races and creeds of men. Both Josephus and Philo have handed down
to posterity a very ugly picture of the sixth Roman procurator of
Judea. Philo charges him with "corruptibility, violence, robberies,
ill-treatment of the people, grievances, continuous executions without
even the form of a trial, endless and intolerable cruelties." If we were
to stop with this, we should have a very poor impression of the deputy
of Tiberius; and, indeed at best, we can never either admire or love
him. But there is a tender and even pathetic side to the character of
Pilate, which is revealed to us by the Evangelists of the New Testament.
The pure-hearted, gentle-minded authors of the Gospels, in whose
writings there is not even a tinge of bitterness or resentment, have
restored "for us the man within the governor, with a delicacy, and even
tenderness, which make the accusing portrait of Philo and Josephus look
like a hard, revengeful daub." Instead of painting him as a monster,
they have linked conscience to his character and placed mercy in his
heart, by their accounts of his repeated attempts to release Jesus. The
extreme of pity and of pathos, derived from these exquisitely merciful
side touches of the gentle biographers of the Christ, is manifested in
the opinion of Tertullian that Pilate was virtually a Christian at
heart.[54]
A further manifestation is the fact that the Abyssinian Church of
Christians has canonized him and placed his name in the calendar on June
25th.
A still further revelation of this spirit of regarding Pilate merely as
a sacred instrument in the hands of God is shown by the Apocryphal
Gospel of Nicodemus which speaks of him as "uncircumcised in flesh but
circumcised in heart."
Renan has called him a good administrator, and has sought to condone his
brutal treatment of the Jews by pointing to the necessity of vigorous
action in dealing with a turbulent and fanatical race. But the combined
efforts of both sacred and secular apologists are still not sufficient
to save the name of Pilate from the scorn and reprobation of mankind.
That he was not a bad man in the worst sense of the term is manifest
from the teachings of the Gospel narratives. To believe that he was
wholly without conscience is to repudiate the revelations of these
sacred writings. Of wanton cruelty and gratuitous wickedness, he was
perhaps incapable. But the circumstances of his birth and breeding; his
descent from a renegade father; his adventurous life in the army of
Germanicus; his contact with and absorption of the skepticism and
debauchery of Rome; his marriage to a woman of questionable virtue whose
mother was notoriously coarse and lewd--all these things had given
coloring to the character of Pilate and had stricken with inward
paralysis the moral fiber of his manhood. And now, in the supreme moment
of his life and of history, from his nerveless grasp fell the reins of
fate and fortune that destiny had placed within his hands. Called upon
to play a leading rôle in the mighty drama of the universe, his craven
cowardice made him a pitiable and contemptible figure. A splendid
example this, the conduct of Pilate, for the youth of the world, not to
imitate but to shun! Let the young men of America and of all the earth
remember that a crisis is allotted to every life. It may be a great one
or a small one, but it will come either invited or unbidden. The sublime
courage of the soul does not avoid, but seeks this crisis. The bravest
and most holy aspirations leap at times like angels from the temple of
the brain to the highest heaven. Never a physician who does not long for
the skill that discovers a remedy for disease and that will make him a
Pasteur or a Koch; never a poet that does not beseech the muse to
inspire him to write a Hamlet or a Faust; never a general of armies who
would not fight an Austerlitz battle. Every ambitious soul fervently
prays for strength, when the great crisis comes, to swing the hammer of
the Cyclop with the arm of the Titan. Let the young aspirant for the
glories of the earth and the rewards of heaven remember that youth is
the time for the formation of that courage and the gathering of that
strength of which victory is born. Let him remember that if he degrades
his physical and spiritual manhood in early life, the coming of the
great day of his existence will make him another Pilate--cringing,
crouching, and contemptible.
The true character of the Roman judge of Jesus is thus very tersely
given by Dr. Ellicott: "A thorough and complete type of the later Roman
man of the world: stern, but not relentless; shrewd and worldworn,
prompt and practical, haughtily just, and yet, as the early writers
correctly perceived, self-seeking and cowardly; able to perceive what
was right, but without moral strength to follow it out."[55]
_His End._--Pilate's utter recklessness was the final cause of his
undoing. It was an old belief among the Samaritans that Moses buried the
sacred vessels of the temple on Mt. Gerizim. An impostor, a sort of
pseudo-prophet, promised the people that if they would assemble on the
top of the mountain, he would unearth the holy utensils in their
presence. The simple-minded Samaritans assembled in great numbers at the
foot of the Mount, and there preparing to ascend, when Pilate on the
pretense that they were revolutionists, intercepted them with a strong
force of horse and foot. Those who did not immediately submit were
either slain or put to flight. The most notable among the captives were
put to death. The Samaritans at once complained to Vitellius, the legate
in Syria at that time. Vitellius at once turned over the administration
of Judea to Marcellus and ordered Pilate to leave for Rome in order to
give an account to the emperor of the charges brought against him by the
Jews.[56] Before he arrived in Italy, Tiberius had died; but Pilate
never returned to the province over which he had ruled during ten bloody
and eventful years.
"_Paradosis Pilati._"--The death of Pilate is clouded in mystery and
legend. Where and when he died is not known. Two apocryphal accounts are
interesting, though false and ridiculous. According to one legend, the
"Paradosis Pilati," the emperor Tiberius, startled and terrified at the
universal darkness that had fallen on the Roman world at the hour of the
crucifixion, summoned Pilate to Rome to answer for having caused it. He
was found guilty and condemned to death; but before he was executed, he
prayed to Jesus that he might not be destroyed in eternity with the
wicked Jews, and pleaded ignorance as an excuse for having delivered the
Christ to be crucified. A voice from heaven answered his prayer, and
assured him that all generations would call him blessed, and that he
should be a witness for Christ at his second coming to judge the Twelve
Tribes of Israel. He was then executed; an angel, according to the
legend, received his head; and his wife died from joy and was buried
with him.
"_Mors Pilati._"--According to another legend, the "Mors Pilati,"
Tiberius had heard of the miracles of healing wrought by Jesus in Judea.
He ordered Pilate to conduct to Rome the man possessed of such divine
power. But Pilate was forced to confess that he had crucified the
miracle worker. The messenger sent by Tiberius met Veronica who gave him
the cloth that had received the impress of the divine features. This was
taken to Rome and given to the emperor, who was restored to health by
it. Pilate was summoned immediately to stand trial for the execution of
the Christ. He presented himself wearing the holy tunic. This acted as a
charm upon the emperor, who temporarily relented. After a time, however,
Pilate was thrown into prison, where he committed suicide. His body was
thrown into the Tiber. Storms and tempests immediately followed, and the
Romans were compelled to take out the corpse and send it to Vienne,
where it was cast into the Rhone. But as the storms and tempests came
again, the body was again removed and sent to Lucerne, where it was sunk
in a deep pool, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Even then, it is
said, the water of the pool began to boil and bubble strangely.
This tradition must have had its origin in an early attempt to connect
the name of Pilate with Mt. Pilatus that overlooks Lake Lucerne. Another
legend connected with this mountain is that Pilate sought to find an
asylum from his sorrows in its shadows and recesses; that, after
spending years in remorse and despair, wandering up and down its sides,
he plunged into the dismal lake which occupies its summit. In times
past, popular superstition was wont to relate how "a form is often seen
to emerge from the gloomy waters, and go through the action of washing
his hands; and when he does so, dark clouds of mist gather first round
the bosom of the Infernal Lake (such as it has been styled of old) and
then wrapping the whole upper part of the mountain in darkness, presage
a tempest or hurricane which is sure to follow in a short space."[57]
The superstitious Swiss believed for many centuries that if a stone were
thrown into the lake a violent storm would follow. For many years no one
was permitted to visit it without special authority from the officers of
Lucerne. The neighboring shepherds bound themselves by a solemn oath,
which they renewed annually, never to guide a stranger to it.[58] The
strange spell was broken, however, and the legend exploded in 1584,
when Johannes Müller, curé of Lucerne, was bold enough to throw stones
into the lake, and to stand by complacently to await the
consequences.[59]