A sharp turn eastward up two winding lanes on the Esquiline brought them to the sprawling home of Sejanus. As Pilate was escorted into the atrium, the steward announced that Sejanus could see no one else that afternoon. A troop of disappointed clients, office-seekers, and hangers-on left the premises.
“Come in, Pilate,” Sejanus invited, with unanticipated warmth. The two moved through an elegantly columned peristyle into the library. “I assume the garrison is running smoothly in my absence?”
On his guard, Pilate replied with the expected pleasantry.
“I have an appointment with the princeps in an hour,” Sejanus said, his smile fading, “so we won’t have as much time as I’d like.”
“About last night, sir,” Pilate faltered, cleared his throat, then resumed with just a trace of Oscan dialect in his Latin, “I regret how the wine must have addled my wits. My little joke was—”
“Oh…that,” Sejanus broke in. “Yes. Clever, but dangerously clever. Better forget that pun. But we were among friends, so we can let it rest. Now, if that had been a public banquet, matters might have taken a different turn.”
Vastly relieved, Pilate was promising to bridle his tongue in the future when Sejanus again interrupted. “As a high-ranking member of our equestrian order, you have an excellent education, Pilate, and you’ve nearly completed your military obligations with distinction. Now, what would you like to do after you’ve finished your stint with the praetorians? Resume your rise in the order of offices open to the ‘equestrian career’—a civil service directorship, say, prefect of the grain supply? A foreign prefecture? Or, perhaps, stay on with the Guard and replace me as praetorian prefect some day?”
Pilate was not reassured by the smirk that accompanied Sejanus’s last remark. A subtle man himself, and closer to the prefect than most Romans, he detected a patronizing ring to the question but did not rise to the bait. “Not your post—I think I’d collapse under the demands of the office,” he responded dutifully. “But, while I’ve made no definite plans, I do prefer administration, so I hope to serve Rome in some kind of public office.”
“Good. Too many promising members of our class are deserting politics for business—yet the Empire needs administrators now, not merchants.”
The two men sat back easily in their chairs, to all outward appearances merely enjoying a casual conversation. But Pilate knew better and remained alert, having learned from experience that Sejanus was apt to circle his subject for quite some time, picking up bits of potentially useful information before settling on the real purpose of an interview. Rather than push the pace, Pilate offered measured responses.
Sejanus then turned the conversation in a more profitable direction. “Now, Pilate, let me ask you several random questions, and don’t bother trying to fathom their significance, for the moment. First, what is the city saying about Sejanus?”
“The praetorians are loyal to you to a man. So is most of Rome. Tiberius seems distracted lately, if you’ll pardon my presumption. He’s aging, of course. And ever since the death of Drusus he seems a changed man—morose, suspicious, sullen. He’s rarely seen in public. He doesn’t get on well with the Senate. The general feeling is that for the good of Rome, a strong executive agent is needed to run the government for him, now more than ever. And you are—”
“Enough diplomacy, Pontius Pilatus. Be candid enough to show the other side of the coin.”
“I was just coming to that,” Pilate quickly responded, sensing that Sejanus was testing his integrity as well as his tact. “But you know best who your opponents are: Agrippina and her party, perhaps a third of the Senate—patricians who resent any equestrian in power—and a few stubborn republicans who feel you’re holding together a government which should be allowed to collapse.”
Agrippina, widow of Tiberius’s popular nephew Germanicus, was an arch enemy of Sejanus. She resented his rising influence over the princeps at a time when her sons were next in line for the throne, while Tiberius equally resented her ardent campaigning in their behalf. Agrippina and Sejanus, then, constituted opposite poles in the highly charged party politics of Rome.
“Yes, that’s an adequate catalogue of the opposition,” Sejanus commented to Pilate, “but what about the commoners, the men on the street?”
“The plebeians have never been better off. Rome is at peace. The economy is prospering, and you are given credit for much of this. In candor, though, it’s also known that you recently wrote to Tiberius, asking for Livilla’s hand in marriage, and that he did not give you permission—”
“This is public knowledge?” Sejanus’s eyes were widening.
“Some of the Guard heard it gossiped in the Forum. But it’s also thought that you’ll have your way—eventually. And the people see you as a patient man.”
Livilla was the widow of Tiberius’s son Drusus, and her affection for Sejanus so soon after her husband’s death was a little below decorum. And since such a marriage would have driven Agrippina insane with jealousy, Tiberius had wisely disapproved it at this time.
“Yes, it was a bit premature. An error on my part, Pilate. Love sometimes interferes with intellect, as you must know!…Now, several other issues. Are you a religious man, Tribune?”
The query clearly caught Pilate by surprise. He shifted his position and cleared his throat. “Well…naturally I revere the official gods of the state—”
“Yes, of course. I’ll wager you’re a real fanatic,” said Sejanus with a satirical smirk, since neither of them took Jupiter or Juno seriously, or any of the other Greek deities rebaptized under Latin names. Lately, it seemed, the gods were invoked only for proper emphasis in curses.
“Well, how about philosophy, then,” Sejanus probed, “the intellectual’s substitute for religion? Which school do you follow?”
Pilate reflected a moment. “I’d consider my view something of a cross between Skepticism and Stoicism. Searching for ultimate truth is fine exercise, but has anyone ever found it? If so, what is truth? Truth as taught by the Platonists or the Epicureans? By Aristotle or the Cynics? To that extent I suppose I’m a Skeptic…On the other hand, Skepticism alone would seem inadequate for any rule of life. Here, I think, the Stoics, with their magnificent emphasis on duty, and the oneness of Providence, have something to teach the Roman state.”
“Well, what about Jewish monotheism, then?”
“The Jews are supposed to believe in one divinity, but they’re hardly Stoics!”
“Any other opinions on the Jews, as a people?”
“I think any Roman would agree that they’re a hard-working but terribly inbred and clannish sort of folk, always quarreling among themselves. Yet they bury their differences when it comes to competing with our businessmen! No, I don’t think Jews make very good Romans, and you remember the Fulvia scandal, of course.”
Several years earlier, four disreputable Jews had persuaded a Roman matron named Fulvia to send as an offering to the temple at Jerusalem a purple robe and some gold, which they promptly appropriated for themselves. When he learned of the swindle, Tiberius furiously banished the Jews from Rome, along with some foreign cultists and astrologers—the first such Roman persecution.