CHAPTER 16

I was with Pilate when the letter came from a friend in Rome. Pilate read the first few sentences, and his face went ashen. A frown furrowed deep into his forehead as he read the rest of the letter and handed it to me without speaking.

According to Pilate’s friend, Tiberius Caesar had sent an official letter to the Senate, to be read in the presence of Sejanus. The letter started by praising Sejanus, making it seem like the seventy-one-year-old Tiberius was getting ready to appoint Sejanus as his successor.

But then Tiberius’s rambling letter took a strange turn. Without explanation, Tiberius made several accusations against Sejanus, including charges that Sejanus had plotted against the emperor himself. Tiberius’s letter, which took nearly an hour to read, dismissed Sejanus as commander of the Praetorian Guard and appointed a man named Macro to take his place. Even as the letter was being read in the Senate, Macro and his guards were gathering outside the doors.

Tiberius had concluded the letter by requesting that the Senate lodge charges against Sejanus and conduct a trial to determine whether he was guilty of treason.

The news sucked the breath out of me, especially when I read what happened next. The Senate ordered the arrest of Sejanus and sent him to the Tullianum, a notorious cesspool where Roman generals had traditionally placed conquered kings or high-profile dignitaries just before their executions. That same night he was convicted in a mockery of a trial on the portico of the temple of Concord. The Forum was packed with citizens, shoulder to shoulder, cheering every charge against Sejanus and drowning out any attempt by Sejanus to defend himself.

Immediately after the senators declared him guilty, Sejanus was executed by strangulation. Two soldiers pulled on ropes looped around his neck until he died, no doubt in agony. His body was thrown down the Gemonian Stairs that led to the temple. And instead of leaving the body there to rot, as was the custom with traitors, the crowd had surged forward and ripped the body to pieces.

Riots ensued as statues of Sejanus were torn down and ground to dust. His wife and children were arrested and held for trial. His friends fled Rome for the countryside.

Visions of the dead ruler flashed through my mind as I finished reading the letter from Pilate’s friend. I could recall so vividly Sejanus’s regality and stone-faced temperament at the games. The way he had carried himself around Rome —a seasoned commander of Roman legions and the Praetorian Guard. The way people had groveled to earn his patronage, freedmen and senators alike. Like so many others, I had received my first post from Sejanus.

“Did you see this coming?” I asked Pilate.

He shook his head, his thoughts clearly a thousand miles away.

Pilate had served under Sejanus. On more than one occasion, Pilate had regaled me with stories about those years, about the love/hate relationship between Sejanus and his troops. The stories were interesting in their own right, but for Pilate, I could tell they also had a reassuring undertone. Sejanus was a buffer between Pilate and Tiberius. As long as Sejanus lived, Pilate would never feel the full fury of the emperor’s wrath.

Now that buffer was gone.

“Rome lost a friend, as did I,” Pilate said.

Maybe. But I never saw him shed a tear.

In the ensuing weeks, Pilate came up with a plan that I knew immediately would not end well. I tried to talk him out of it, and I had a strong ally in his wife, Procula, a most remarkable woman. She was ten years younger than her husband, as close to my age as to his, but was absolutely devoted to him. She had a charming face, a full figure, the slight hint of a double chin, and the smooth skin of a noble, though she too hailed from an equestrian family. Her eyes were her most expressive feature —narrow and elongated, inquisitive and bright. She took great care to accentuate them with makeup and always had her eyebrows done exactly so. The eyes drew you in and held you, and she was smart enough to know it.

Pilate made no secret of his affections for her, a rare exception to his usual gruff demeanor. She was easy to love and a favorite of all the staff —upbeat and energetic, the intellectual equal to any man in Caesarea.

Yet even Procula couldn’t talk Pilate out of this idea.

“It’s my private residence!” he thundered. “No Jew is going to tell me how to adorn my private residence!”

He was talking, or rather shouting, about the shields. After mourning the death of Sejanus, Pilate had gathered fifty shields, coated them with gold, and consecrated them to Tiberius. He ordered them hung in his private palace in Jerusalem, an extravagant and gaudy building with enormous rooms, high ceilings, and terraces that overlooked the city. I reminded him that Jerusalem was a holy city. “Hang them in Caesarea,” I urged him. “It’s the capital anyway.”

Pilate wouldn’t hear of it. Shields like these were hung everywhere in the empire —public buildings, temples, even in lavish private homes. The inscription on the shields was not inflammatory. How could the Jews find it offensive? Pilate to Tiberius. It was the least he could do to honor the emperor in a province where, because of the emperor’s kindness, the people could worship their own God and were exempted from military service.

“Who could object to it?” Pilate asked.

It was a rhetorical question, and I chose not to answer. Instead, I looked to Procula, who shrugged and shook her head.

There was no reasoning with Pilate when he got like this.