CHAPTER 30

Things quieted down after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The Jews celebrated the Passover without further incident on the fifteenth day of their month Nisan. We used the day to prepare for the long trip back to Caesarea.

On Sunday, we left at dawn. We went out the same way we came in —an impressive entourage with a few thousand soldiers marching in formation, reflecting the sun from their shields and armor. Anyone who watched would have thought Pilate was still in charge. Those of us who had been there for the trial of Jesus knew better.

It took Pilate and me two days to refine the letter we sent to Tiberius Caesar reporting the incident. As usual, Pilate had asked me to prepare the first draft. But when he read it, he accused me of including too much detail and making the prisoner seem innocent. “He claimed to be a king. That’s the main point,” Pilate said.

He redrafted the letter himself. The trial of Jesus merited only two paragraphs. The Nazarene had called himself a king. He had a huge following. Mindful of the prior admonition from the great Tiberius to keep peace in Judea, Pilate had given Jesus every opportunity to recant.

When he found out that Jesus was a Galilean, Pilate had sent him to Herod. But Herod merely made fun of the man and sent him back to Pilate. Eventually, Pilate ordered that the man be crucified, demonstrating to the Jews that the great Tiberius had no rivals.

There was no mention of Barabbas. There was no mention of the multiple times Pilate had found the man innocent. There was no mention of the prisoner’s stoic insistence that although he was a king, his Kingdom was not of this world.

And not surprisingly, there was no mention of the eclipse or earthquake.

I had carried my guilt back to Caesarea. My unease over my role in the trial had intensified by watching the brave rabbi die. Even the gods had been displeased with the injustice of it all.

Cicero wrote that guilty men are tormented and pursued by the Furies not with blazing torches as in the tragedies but with the anguish of remorse and the torture of a guilty conscience.

Cicero could not have been more right. It took me weeks just to regain my appetite. I thrashed in bed at night. When I did sleep, I was visited by images from the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. I relived and rehashed my lack of courage under pressure. What if I had stood strong with Pilate when he first decided to find the man innocent? What if I hadn’t insisted on that ploy of offering up Barabbas? What if I had stood up to Pilate when he waffled at the end and put his own self-interests first?

What if I had been the one on trial and my life had depended on somebody being courageous enough to apply the law impartially?

Pilate made it clear that such questions were off-limits during our time together. I brought the subject up once, indirectly, by commenting on how upset the verdict had made Procula.

“What I have done, I have done,” Pilate said. “The gods will decide whether I played my part well.”

“Do you ever wonder yourself?” I asked.

He gave me a look of annoyance that told me I had already pushed the matter too far. “What I have done, I have done.”

It was the last time I mentioned the incident to him.

But he couldn’t stop people outside the Imperial Palace from talking about it.

A month after we returned to Caesarea, the rumors still floated like leaves on the wind, stirring up the Jews in our city. The followers of Jesus claimed he wasn’t really dead. He had been seen alive after the crucifixion in the city of Jerusalem and at one time had taught a group of five hundred on the hills outside the city.

I put no stock in the rumors. I had watched the man die, seen him give up the ghost with my own eyes. He might have been, as Quintus himself had exclaimed, the very Son of God. And his soul might have been immortal, vying right now with the other gods for his place in the pantheon. But dead men didn’t come back to life. Certainly not in the way that the Jews were describing Jesus. He supposedly looked the same, except for the nail wounds in his wrists and feet and a hole in his side where the soldiers had pierced him with a spear to make sure he was dead.

I was a little concerned, from a political perspective, that the movement had not died with its alleged Messiah. But this was not the first time such things had happened. Perhaps his disciples had stolen the body from the grave as some of the religious leaders were claiming. Pilate had placed guards at the tomb, but I knew Roman soldiers were not infallible and not above being bribed. In any event, we still had a province to govern.

I never had a chance to return to Jerusalem. Three months after the trial of Jesus, and six months ahead of schedule, I was replaced with another assessore and sent back to Rome to begin my career as an advocate. I knew the hand of Seneca was behind the maneuver. With Sejanus now dead, alliances had shifted, and Seneca’s star was again on the rise. Agrippina’s family was no longer the threat it had been previously. The time was ripe for Seneca’s allies and friends to make their influence felt in the capital city.

I knew I was only a minor player in the drama unfolding in Rome. Nevertheless, I was excited to return at a time of such great turmoil because turmoil spawned opportunity. Tiberius would soon be gone, and the jockeying to succeed him as emperor was already taking place. I could read about it from afar, or I could be on the fringes of the swirling intrigue unfolding at the center of the civilized world.

I was tired of writing formulaic letters to Tiberius and helping Pilate judge the same types of cases over and over. The law was made in Rome. There, I would be free to carve a name for myself as an advocate, not just serve as an adviser to a hotheaded and unpredictable prefect.

I left Pilate on good terms, though our relationship was never the same after that trial in Jerusalem. He wished me the best and told me I had served him well. He drafted a letter touting my virtues, and I packed it carefully among the other books that I kept in the boxes impregnated with cedar oil. My scrolls were well-worn and cracked because I constantly unrolled and read them before tying them up again and stuffing them away.

But my favorite letter I had left unopened for the last three months. I opened it once, with great reluctance, during the voyage home. The words that had inspired me on my trip to Caesarea now filled me with sadness and regret.

What we have to seek for, then, is . . . 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.

As the winds battered our ship and prolonged the journey home, I thought long and hard about my time in Caesarea. I had demonstrated a great capacity for writing, and I had mastered the intricacies of Roman provincial law. But on the point that mattered most, I had failed most profoundly. I had not risen to the occasion as Seneca had encouraged me to do. And because of my cowardice and failure, my soul felt a long way from kinship with God.