Now the disgusting, distasteful task of backtracking without seeming to, the gentle art of surrendering Rome’s honor while appearing to preserve it.
“In the name of the clemency of Tiberius Caesar and of the Senate and the Roman People, sheathe your swords!” Pilate ordered his troops. “People of Judea, I was sent not to shed your blood, but to govern you with equity and justice. You will pardon this test of the sword, but I had to determine your sincerity in this matter. I see now that the military standards in question are truly offensive to you and that you are not simply testing Roman policy.”
The Jews were listening in apparent but unforecast rapture.
“Do not misunderstand. I shall not dishonor the emperor by ordering his medallions removed from the standards of the Augustan Cohort. But I shall transfer that cohort back to Caesarea and send another in its place without iconic insignia. Now go in peace and be good citizens so that Jew and Roman may live in concord.”
A mighty roar of approval and thunderous waves of applause greeted Pilate’s statement. Jew fell weeping on the neck of Jew as they left the stadium in triumphant singing and took the road back to Jerusalem. Even Pilate was moved by the sight, though he quickly sobered to the further task of salvaging his prestige in this exasperating affair.
His council applauded the ingenious solution by which the emperor’s standards were not compromised, while Procula adoringly styled her husband’s conduct as statesmanlike. Even the auxiliaries, though hardly Judeophile, were glad to have been spared the gory task that had seemed unavoidable. When the Augustan Cohort learned of its recall to Caesarea, few tears were shed. In fact, the Tower Antonia fairly rocked with an impromptu celebration at the prospect of wintering in the capital.
So the affair of the standards, as it would later be called, ended happily. Only Pilate was honest enough with himself to acknowledge the confrontation for the personal defeat it really was. The Jews had won the first round. But there need be no dangerous repercussion from the episode if the Jewish authorities did not misconstrue his concession as a sign of weakness. If they did, or if they tried to press him again, then, Pilate promised himself, blood might flow indeed. Another such episode and his first countermove would be to replace Joseph Caiaphas as high priest, since he seemed unable to control his people.
And where, Pilate reflected, was Caiaphas during the whole affair? Annas was probably too old to make the trip to Caesarea, but Caiaphas? The high priest was doubtless caught in an embarrassing dilemma. On the one hand, he had to—and probably wanted to—sign the Jewish protest along with the rest of the Sanhedrin. But he would not go to Caesarea and appear in an anti-Roman demonstration antagonizing the new prefect, for he knew Pilate could replace him as Gratus had his predecessors. Well and good: if Judeans could use such pressures to alter Pilate’s decisions, Pilate could perhaps use Caiaphas to alter Jewish intentions.
Chapter 7
It had been a blundering beginning for his administration in Judea, and it soured some of the idealism Pilate had originally brought to his office. Romanization of the Jews would be a formidable, perhaps impossible, task. That was now clear.
Fortunately, the standards affair did not, in fact, set up the pattern of trouble Pilate had feared, and once he adjusted to the routine of Judean administration, the government seemed to move with a momentum of its own. There was considerable correspondence with the various toparchial Sanhedrins, since these bodies were responsible for collecting the taxes and channeling them to Caesarea. There were judicial sentences to confirm, appeals to hear, disputes to adjudicate, especially the regular, small-scale unpleasantries perpetrated between gentiles and Jews, or Samaritans and Jews. But aides handled much of the dull routine and paperwork. Governing Judea was a superable assignment after all.
Pilate spent his first winter in Palestine more as mayor of Caesarea than as prefect of Judea. The more he came to know the city, the more astonished he was at the engineering skill of Herod’s architects and builders. There were touches of genius here which could have graced even the Capitoline Hill at Rome. The temple of the Divine Augustus, which crowned an eminence fronting on the harbor, was the civic symbol for which the city was known, Caesarea’s Pharos. Two great statues commanded the interior sanctuary, one of Augustus sculptured to resemble Olympian Zeus; the other of Roma, done after the likeness of Hera, queen of the gods.
Herod’s building materials were phenomenaclass="underline" immense, obelisk-like stone pillars up to fifty feet long, cut out of living rock in one gigantic hulk, not wafered into sections and stacked on a core like columns in Greece and Rome. Only Egypt could rival Herod’s monumental architecture.
Maintaining it all in good repair was one of the subordinate tasks of the Judean governor. Pilate was more concerned about ensuring an adequate water and sewer system, the dual problem afflicting most cities in the Empire. Rome, he recalled, had done better with her water supply than her drainage. Graceful aqueducts, converging on the capital from all directions, cascaded an almost prodigal supply of fresh water, but Rome’s sewers were not always equal to the task of removing the waste.
Caesarea was better off. Not only was her northern aqueduct sufficient, but Pilate soon found that it was unkind to refer to “sewers” in that city. The capital boasted instead a vast subterranean plumbing system, some of whose arches were works of art that evidently only the waste could enjoy. And Mediterranean tides made the system automatic: major conduits sloped gently to the sea, draining the city’s waste at ebb tide; later, with high tide, the Mediterranean herself returned to rinse out remaining impurities.
On more visible levels at Caesarea, Pilate conceived a project which would both enhance Herod’s architecture and solve the problem of how to accommodate the roistering ship crews wintering in port. Irked by idleness and boredom, the sailors were creating serious waterfront disturbances. Pilate planned to hire the men out for a construction project which he had envisioned ever since his first promenade with Procula one evening on the great harbor jetty. In all the impressive skyline of Caesarea, one type of building, dear to Romans, was conspicuously missing: a basilica. One of the most handsome yet versatile structures of the Mediterranean world, the basilica was a rectangular building with rows of columns framing a colonnaded interior hall, which could be used as a law court, merchants’ exchange, public auditorium, or even as a shelter for citizens caught in the rain.
Pilate wanted a basilica for his capital. Not a large one, like those lining the Roman Forum, but a much smaller version, adapted to the needs of Caesarea. The son of Herod’s architect for the city was commissioned to design a plan, and he easily caught Pilate’s ideas. Construction began. At first, the winterbound sailors balked at being hired out of their element, but once they had wined through their savings, they proved much more cooperative. Since Gratus had left Pilate a healthy provincial treasury, he could pay a decent wage.