Pilate slept fitfully that night. Calls, cries, angry shouts, and chanting broke the silence of the city. At 2 A.M., he walked over to a palace window and looked out across Jerusalem. The Jewish capital seemed ablaze with moving torches. He was glad Procula had not accompanied him on this trip.
Returning to bed, he searched for sleep. His last thoughts seemed to be a conversation between two unknowns. “Why the rioting?” someone asked. “Be firm!” someone replied. Then he dropped off.
“PI—LIT! PI—LIT! PON—SHUS—PI—LIT!” The thundering chant awakened him.
He looked out. A huge crowd filled the gray-white expanse of the esplanade in front of the palace. “PON—SHUS—PI—LIT!” The cry continued.
Pilate summoned a herald, who went out and announced: “The prefect will ascend his tribunal shortly and hear you. But your shouting must stop immediately, or the square will be cleared by force.”
The din of the crowd gave way to a reduced, but still colossal, murmur.
When he had breakfasted and dressed in official garb, Pilate appeared before the crowd and mounted his tribunal, an elevated dais just in front of the palace. A small bodyguard of auxiliaries flanked him on either side. Beyond that, there were only a few Roman soldiers in sight, stationed at the edges of the crowd.
“What do you wish?” Pilate asked the mass assembly.
A spokesman for the throng edged his way closer to the tribunal, a middle-aged Judean whom Pilate did not recognize. “The sacred treasury dare not be used for building a Roman aqueduct,” he said. “Sacrificial gifts cannot he so desecrated! You must return the money to the temple treasury. This abomination must not continue!”
The statement was seconded by a swelling cry of affirmatives.
“Is this your appointed spokesman?” Pilate asked.
“Yes…Yes,” the people replied.
“And why not the high priest Caiaphas?”
There was a general grumbling.
“And why not the temple treasurer?” Pilate probed further. “Surely he above all should be concerned about the Corban.”
Further murmuring greeted the statement, but no reply.
“Perhaps, then, one of the chief priests of the Sanhedrin should speak for you, rather than this man.”
The people were growing impatient, but Pilate persisted, “Is any chief priest present?”
He quickly scanned the plaza, and seeing no hand raised—though of course he did not wish to see any—continued, “Your leaders aren’t present because they concurred in this equitable arrangement, whereby, according to your own traditions regarding shekalim, the Corban may be used for such important purposes as ensuring a good water supply for the city of Jerusalem.”
“But you forced the high priest, the treasurer, and the other leaders into this arrangement!” The spokesman was pointing his hand directly at Pilate.
“I didn’t force them. The only threat I used was cancellation of plans for the aqueduct.”
“Would that you had cancelled them, Prefect!” someone called from the crowd. The people laughed and applauded.
“And you probably enjoyed a drink of water from that very aqueduct before coming here this morning,” Pilate countered.
“I spat in that water!” he shot back. The crowd roared its approval.
In the absence of troops, the people were in a very spirited mood, feeling free to speak their mind. This was as Pilate had hoped. So far, all the energies of the crowd were verbal, with no hint of physical violence. Again he tried to combat emotion with logic.
“Men and women of Israeclass="underline" listen closely to my final statement,” he called out. “I planned this project for the welfare of Jerusalem. Not one of you can deny that the city was badly in need of a better water supply. Now, if our government had paid the entire cost of the aqueduct, your tribute would necessarily have been doubled for several years, which would have been hard on all of you. But since there’s an annual surplus in the temple treasury, and since your own traditions permit excess funds to be spent for such needs as this, the water system was financed in the best manner for all concerned. Besides, where does the water flow? Into the temple! You and your children can enjoy the water with no additional taxes to pay. You should be grateful to your prefect instead of staging these hostilities.”
“Grateful we should be?” someone yelled. “We’d be grateful if you’d remove yourself!” Pilate’s soldiers clapped their hands to their swords.
“And take your cursed standards with you!” cried another.
Pilate ground his teeth, fighting to control himself. “How can a governor deal with you people in rational terms? You know I removed the ensigns!”
One of the young Zealots hoisted himself onto the shoulders of another and cried, “Stand fast, my compatriots! We won at the stadium in Caesarea, and we’ll win here too!” Then, pointing to Pilate, he said, “We shall stay here until you return the money to the temple!” A great affirmative chorus reinforced the threat.
“Hear me, my young friend,” Pilate shouted, “and all of you: the funds will not be returned. They were spent for a justified purpose, approved by your own leaders. The money certainly didn’t go into my pocket—I had nothing to gain by this aqueduct—it was built for the public good. Don’t now make the mistake of interpreting my reasonable explanations to you as weakness. I tried to be fair. You’ve been unreasonable. This plaza will be cleared at once! With the first trumpet blast, you will leave in orderly fashion. At the second, my auxiliaries will advance and clear the square by force. Do not wait for the second trumpet!”
He turned and signaled his trumpeters. A rising commotion smothered the dying echoes of their brief flourish. The people seemed divided. Some felt that Pilate was bluffing. Others sensed he was not, and started to move toward streets leading away from the esplanade.
Pilate watched the crowd in an agony of suspense. According to his plans of the night before, he was far more prepared than they realized. He had ordered two hundred of his soldiers to dress as civilians, concealing swords and cudgels beneath their robes. These troops were now well distributed in the crowd with orders to subdue the most vocal of the agitators at Pilate’s signal.
Ten minutes passed, but at least two-thirds of the multitude remained defiantly. Pilate seemed reluctant to give the second trumpet signal. The most vociferous in the crowd began taunting him.
“We call your bluff, noble Prefect. You wouldn’t slaughter us all.”
“Remember Caesarea!”
“Brave Pilate! Why don’t you clear Judea of Romans instead? Then we’d both be happy.”
“Go back and make love to your pretty wife, Prefect. You’ve no stomach for this kind of thing!”
Livid with rage, Pilate gave the signal for the second trumpet. The notes spat out in the strains of the Roman battle charge and ricocheted across the vast plaza. Troops poured in from adjoining streets, but most of the riot control fell to the auxiliaries dressed in Jewish clothing, who now began cudgeling those who had taunted Pilate. Then they savagely went after others with their flailing staves.
A full-dress Near Eastern riot broke out, a gory melee in which it was difficult for the auxiliaries to spare the innocent. They waded into the people, their clubs impartially knocking whatever heads and bodies lay in their path. Although Pilate had cautioned his men not to use swords, the stinging insults to their chief, and to Rome itself, were too much for some of his men. Blades began to glint with furious enthusiasm, slashing and carving their way into human arms, legs, trunks. Many of the Jews managed to escape. Others bravely resisted, grabbing weapons from fallen troops and fighting back. But the people had not really expected the sickening spectacle of anguished screams from the wounded, the sweaty stench of people fighting for their lives, the dull and ugly thud of wood against flesh, the flashing of forbidden swords, and the bloodshed.