CHAPTER 14

“Bold times call for bold action,” Seneca had said. Those words echoed in my head as I prepared to leave Rome and spend three years in Judea. Seneca had been talking about his letter to the emperor, but I mulled the words in the context of Flavia. Should I write her a letter? What would I say? An equestrian of my rank and age had no business corresponding directly with a Vestal.

But I had been struck. How could I just disappear without letting her know where I was going or making sure she understood that I had helped Seneca with the letter?

Ultimately I decided not to write. Unrestrained courage is sometimes more like suicide than valor. If the Fates meant for me to cross paths again with Flavia, it would happen. But it was not likely. I told myself to forget about her, but my heart wasn’t listening.

It wasn’t for want of distractions. My future, both immediate and long-term, held more than sufficient peril to occupy my attention. I was going to a troubled province run by a troubled prefect. Pontius Pilate had a reputation for being moody and short-tempered —another equestrian trying to climb the provincial ranks. According to my sources, he was insecure and not at all happy that he had drawn the short straw of Judea.

Pilate had served under Sejanus as a member of the Praetorian Guard during the days when Tiberius still lived in Rome. Though Sejanus was gruff and demanding, he knew each of his men by name and later ensured that each had a chance to make something of himself. Thus, a little over four years ago, when Tiberius withdrew to Capri and Sejanus took over many of the emperor’s responsibilities, Pilate had been dispatched to Judea as a prefect. His task was to serve as the personal representative of the great Tiberius Caesar, with strict orders to keep the peace and contain the Jews.

It had not been a smooth journey.

Pilate, a man of infinite bravado and limited patience, made two serious mistakes early in his prefecture. The first occurred shortly after he arrived in Judea. He ordered the troops stationed in Jerusalem to display the standards of the Roman army, including the image of Caesar Augustus, on the walls of the Antonia Fortress, overlooking the Jewish Temple. The standards were mounted at night, under cover of darkness, surprising the Jewish worshipers the next morning.

Pilate’s predecessor, mindful of Jewish sensitivities to any graven images in the Holy City, had always left the standards of the army in Caesarea. But in Pilate’s mind, the emperor’s image was everywhere else in the empire, so why not in Jerusalem? Why not have a graven image of the emperor casting his gaze down at those worshiping in the Temple —one god keeping an eye on the worshipers of another?

It was the middle of the winter, but that didn’t stop thousands of Jews from walking sixty-five miles from Jerusalem to Caesarea to confront Pilate. They stood outside his palace for days, begging him to take the standards down. Pilate refused. It would be an insult to the emperor.

After five days of stalemate, Pilate agreed to meet with the Jewish leaders in the great Caesarean amphitheater. He argued with them until his patience grew thin. Neither side was willing to compromise. Exasperated, Pilate ordered his soldiers to surround the contingent and draw their swords. The Jews bared their necks and dared the soldiers to kill them.

Astonished, Pilate backed down and gave an order to remove the standards from Jerusalem. The followers of Yahweh had won the first round.

They would not be so fortunate in the second. It occurred after Pilate built an enormous aqueduct to bring springwater across the Judean desert to the cisterns of Jerusalem. The aqueduct stretched for nearly forty miles, beautiful new pipes that brought pure and cold water to the city.

But the Jews protested again. Pilate had used corban money —sacred tithes from the Temple treasury —to help pay for the construction. This time he was dumbfounded by their protestations. Romans celebrated such engineering feats, heaping honors on the rulers who bestowed them. But the Jews complained! Could nothing satisfy them?

The next time Pilate visited Jerusalem, he took his place on his judgment seat and addressed the naysayers. They seemed even more enraged than they had been about the standards. They pressed close, forming a ring around him, and shouted insults about the way he had used God’s money. Pilate maintained his composure but steadfastly refused to apologize —the aqueduct had been built for them.

Still the Jewish leaders pressed their point. Why had he used the Temple money? It was sacrilege!

Though it appeared that Pilate was bravely facing the crowd alone, he had in fact hidden his soldiers among them, dressed like Jews yet with daggers under their garments. When he had heard enough and felt threatened by the increasing hostility of those closest to his seat, Pilate raised his right hand and made a slashing motion across his throat. The soldiers struck, slicing their way through the crowd. They massacred hundreds, from the judgment seat through the streets of Jerusalem, even as the Jews scrambled to retreat, trampling each other in the panic.

This was the man I would now serve. I would be his chief legal adviser, his assessore, in a province where a strong-willed people hated him with barely restrained passion. Judea was a boiling cauldron, and I was being thrown into the middle of the pot.

I packed my stacks of white togas with the two narrow stripes, my cloaks and sandals, my household items, and my favorite books. Many of those same books had gone with me on the journey from Greece to Rome, and they were now well-worn scrolls, faded and cracked, carefully sealed in boxes designed to protect them on the journey at sea. I packed my wax notebooks and my iron pens. I said good-bye to my friends, made a sacrifice at the temple of Mars, and walked to the coast.

Our ship would sail by way of Alexandria, heading toward the rising sun. As we left port, I stood at the stern and watched the Roman coastline fade away. It would be three years before I would see Rome again, and I already missed her. For all her shortcomings, Rome was still the center of the civilized world and the greatest city on earth. The food, the architecture, the bustling excitement of the Forum, the consolidation of power that took place there —I would find none of this in Judea.

I found an out-of-the-way spot on the massive ship, felt the wind in my face, and listened to the chants of the slaves as their oars slid in and out of the water. I took out my most cherished scroll and read the words again. This one was from Seneca. The eloquent words formed a mission not just for my time in the land of Judea but for my entire life:

“But how,” you ask, “does one attain the highest good?” Your money will not place you on a level with God, for God has no property. Your bordered robe will not do this, for God is not clad in raiment; nor your reputation, nor your display of self, nor knowledge of your name spread throughout the world, for no one has knowledge of God. The throng of slaves which carries your litter along the city streets and in foreign places will not help you, for this God of whom I speak, though the highest and most powerful of beings, carries all things on his own shoulders. Neither can beauty or strength make you blessed, for none of these qualities can withstand old age.

What we have to seek for, then, is that which is untouched by time and chance. And what is this? It is the soul —but the soul that is upright, good, and great. What else could you call such a soul but a god dwelling as a guest in the human body? A soul like this may descend into a Roman equestrian as well as into a freedman’s son or a slave. For what is a Roman equestrian or a freedman’s son or a slave? They are mere titles, born of ambition or of wrong. One may leap to heaven from the very slums. Only rise and mold thyself into kinship with thy God.