In his mind, Antipas at first tried to discount it all as a drunken nightmare, but that would not work. He had imprisoned the Baptizer as a punitive act to stop his haranguing him: “It’s not legal for you to have your brother’s wife.” Herodias hated him for that and had nagged Antipas to have him executed. But John was a holy man, and Antipas had not intended to bother a hair on his unkempt head. Fact was, when Herodias was not around, he even enjoyed talking with the desert prophet, nimbly dodging the verbal arrows John fearlessly shot at him.
But it was no longer a question of himself and the Baptizer. It was now a public matter of state, confirmed by oath, due to his own carelessness and Herodias’s fiendish stratagem. He would settle scores with her later. But what to do now?
Chuza was at his side, whispering, “Excellency, I would not consider myself legally or morally bound by that oath, for your intention was to provide the young Salome a gift of great monetary value. Now surely the head of—”
“I gave her my word.”
“Fear the people, then, Excellency. They consider John a prophet.”
Salome now tilted her head upward and stared directly into the eyes of Antipas with an unmistakably challenging expression. Her mien spoke eloquently what remained unspoken: “I dare you to break your word, Tetrarch Herod Antipas, in front of all your guests.”
Pilate, at the outer edge of that stare, caught the smirk of success spelled out by Salome’s limpid blue eyes and firmly pressing, perfect lips. But he did not intervene. He had overheard Chuza’s advice to Antipas, and it was obviously correct. Only a fool would fail to heed it, and the Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea was no fool.
But Pilate was a Roman, a practical man who could temper absolutes to suit circumstances, as Rome herself had been doing for the last seven hundred years. Here in the East, however, absolutes were not so easily adjusted, and the spoken word was thought to have a reality all its own. For this reason the Jews never expressed the truest name of their deity, Yahweh, believing it would intrude on the divine itself. Similarly, the “Law of the Medes and Persians,” once enunciated, could not be retracted.
“I gave my word,” Antipas muttered, looking up and down the tables at what was left of his comissatio. It was the steel look in the eyes of his chief officers from Galilee that decided the issue for him. To back down on his oath would expose weakness in front of the very men he could least afford to have see it. Summoning a guard, he gave him the command.
“No!” Chuza cried, but a look from Antipas silenced him. Pilate was aghast, a feeling of disgusted helplessness numbing him.
Suddenly the silent halls of the cavernous castle resounded with a cry from below: “Repent, Antipas! The kingdom of God is at hand! The Messiah has—” The words were cut off.
The gory trophy was brought in on a platter, as requested, and handed to Salome. The head, propped in an upright position, still fastened its open eyes on Antipas with prophetic fury. Pilate was nauseated. Chuza wept. Salome turned about and carried the reddening platter to her mother. Antipas’s birthday party was over.
Pilate and Procula prepared to leave early the next morning, two days sooner than planned. Just before their departure, Chuza finally managed to see them privately.
“What were you trying to tell me yesterday morning?” Pilate asked the steward.
“Oh…nothing,” he said mournfully, “too late now.”
“But what was it?”
“I wanted to ask you to use your influence with the tetrarch to secure the release of John the Baptizer. He was a prophet of God.”
“It was a disgusting, nasty business. Reminds me of the time when Cicero’s head was impaled on a spear in the Forum, and Antony’s wife stuck pins into the tongue which had attacked her husband. Women can be the most vengeful of creatures…But why was the young Salome so hostile to the Baptizer?”
“Like mother, like daughter. John insisted that Herodias was living in sin with Antipas, which would make Salome the daughter of a harlot.”
“Why didn’t you alert me sooner? I didn’t even know the prophet was at Machaerus.”
“You didn’t? Couldn’t you hear him singing hymns each night?”
“So he was the one…”
“Yes,” Chuza said mournfully. Then he brightened. “But John did not live in vain. He was the forerunner of the Messiah. He has come, Excellency, he has come!”
“Who has come?”
“The Messiah. Already he’s preaching in Galilee and working great wonders.”
Pilate took leave of Chuza, mystified by the fanaticism of the land. Here was the presumably sensible chief steward of a neighboring government, who witnessed the execution of one prophet one evening, then declared for a new one the very next morning.
Antipas and Herodias saw them off, somewhat apologetic for the events of the previous night. Pilate’s thanks were just barely tactful.
With no effort on his part, he was leaving Machaerus in a much stronger political position than Antipas. Their rivalry, in fact, was now over, with Pilate the victor. Drawing subsidies from the temple might look bad in Jewish eyes, and killing rioters even worse; but these were mere foibles compared with executing a prophet of God. News of the dramatic demise of the Baptizer was all over Palestine in a week.
Chapter 12
The year 31 A.D. dawned auspiciously for the prefect of Judea, now in his fifth year of office. The land was prosperous and quiet. For months no demonstrations had disrupted the calm. To be sure, several Zealot leaders in Galilee continued agitating their followers, but they were Antipas’s problem.
The tetrarch had other difficulties, Pilate learned. His Galileans so hated Herodias and Salome for their roles in John’s execution that they never ventured far from Tiberias without a large bodyguard. Salome soon left Galilee entirely. The tetrarch Philip, evidently, was thoroughly smitten with the girl and finally married her. It was a normally abnormal romance for the House of Herod, half niece marrying half uncle. But with the blood of a prophet quite literally on her hands, anything else Salome did would look quite acceptable by comparison.
Early that year, Pilate and Procula explored Egypt as guests of their friends, the prefect Gaius Galerius and his wife. The foursome took an extended trip up the Nile on Cleopatra’s refurbished royal barge to view the monuments at Luxor and Thebes, imposing in their incredible proportions. During much of the excursion, Galerius chatted excitedly about his nephew, a brilliant young equestrian who was now cutting a widening swath of success through Rome as a Stoic philosopher. His name was Seneca.
As it happened, however, this would be the final happiness for Galerius. After sixteen years of distinguished service to Rome as prefect of Egypt, he took sick shortly after Pilate’s visit and resigned his office, hoping to return to Rome before death. But on the voyage home he died.
Saddened, Pilate wondered if Galerius’s successor in Egypt might alter the military power structure of the Empire so far as Sejanus was concerned. The new prefect was Vitrasius Pollio, who was unknown to Pilate. But such speculation was now unnecessary. Sejanus had achieved a long-cherished goal. He was elected consul for the year 31, the highest office of the old Republic, and with the emperor himself as colleague. It was an almost tacit declaration that the praetorian commander was indeed heir apparent.
There were other clues that the purple mantle of empire was all but draped around the shoulders of Sejanus. Agrippina’s son, Nero, a former heir to the throne, had committed suicide on the isle of Pontia. Gone was any possibility of Tiberius relenting in his favor, as Sejanus had feared in his letter to Pilate. Now also, at last, the princeps sanctioned Sejanus’s betrothal to his niece and daughter-in-law, Livilla, that long-standing romance on which Tiberius had at first frowned. The marriage would tie Sejanus into the imperial blood line.