Since the prefect had fallen late in 31 A.D., most of the treason trials took place in 32. Pilate learned that the actual reign of terror had ended in the weeks following the execution of Sejanus, when senators finally wore themselves out attacking each other. But now the more orderly trials were taking place. Typically, a letter would arrive from Capri, charging some high official with complicity in the Sejanian conspiracy and supplying what evidence there was. If the Senate found the man guilty, he was executed or allowed to commit suicide. The innocent, fewer in number, were acquitted. In the judiciary storm sweeping Rome, Pilate found one fact abundantly clear: friendship with Sejanus, once an asset, was now a mortal liability. Many prominent Romans were living, like him, in daily dread of being cited for maiestas, treason against state and emperor.
Pilate and Procula were deeply concerned also for their parents. So far, they had escaped any accusations, although Proculeius did appear as a defense witness in the trial of one of his friends. But their point of contact with Sejanus had been Pilate, so the first indictment to blight their families would likely be the case of Rome versus the prefect of Judea.
By now, Pilate had accustomed himself to living under this political sword of Damocles, although reports that the princeps was reaching down into the equestrian class to ferret out Sejanians was hardly comforting. More disturbing was Tiberius’s failure to acknowledge the golden shield. Certainly he was busy with his incriminations, but might not his secretary on Capri have had the decency to write that the trophy had been received?
The princeps was always unpredictable, of course, but now he was touchy too. A letter from Proculeius gave the latest example of the imperial spleen. A senator named Gallio moved that retired praetorians be given the honor of sitting with equestrians in the lowest fourteen rows of seats at the theater. But a letter from Tiberius blasted the proposal, suggesting that Gallio was trying to turn the guards’ heads in a treasonable manner. As reward for his innocent motion, Gallio was banished from Italy. Then, when it was learned that he planned to live on the beautiful island of Lesbos, he was dragged back to detention in Rome, since Tiberius thought such an exile too pleasant for him.
It was late summer when Pilate received another letter bearing the large, purple imperial seals, his second from Tiberius since the fall of Sejanus. The mere act of opening messages from the princeps made him taste anxiety, but this time Pilate had more confidence. Here, finally, would be the emperor’s acknowledgment for the golden shield. The letter read:
Tiberius Caesar Augustus, pontifex maximus, consul five times, acclaimed imperator, holding the tribunician power for the thirty-fourth year, to Pontius Pilatus, praefectus Iudaeae, greeting.
Have you forgotten that a prefect represents the will of the princeps in his province, rather than his own? Or did you fail to read my last letter which expressed that will? Or are you, perhaps, still taking orders from the shade of Sejanus rather than the living Tiberius? In that case, you ought to join him!
A shuddering horror clutched at Pilate and beads of perspiration broke over his face, blotching with dread. His hand shook so much that he had trouble reading the quivering scroll. Finally he set it down on a table.
In my last letter—I shall not say “if memory serves me correctly,” for it does—I told you distinctly that you were not to disturb Jewish customs, but, on the contrary, to uphold, even defend them. What, then, is this new indiscretion of yours regarding the golden shields? I shall not play the ingrate and withhold my appreciation for your motive in this gesture. But it was a gesture in the wrong place, since the Jews are nearly fanatic about what does or does not happen in their Holy City. You ought to know that by now.
Herod Antipas, his brothers, and the chief priests of the Sanhedrin have written me, pleading that the shields be removed from the palace in Jerusalem. I have written them that their request will be honored. You will remove the shields immediately. But they are handsome and should be exhibited: I suggest that you transfer them to the Temple of Augustus at Caesarea.
You are to conciliate the Jews, Pilatus. Do not try our patience again, or we shall have to review the full extent of your past relationship with the murderous traitor Sejanus—after recalling you to Rome. Farewell.
Given the Calends of July, A.V.C. 785.
Pilate spent the next minutes collecting himself. Could one man fear, hate, despair, and be shocked, frustrated, angry, and vengeful all at the same time? He could. Most of all he was swept with a sickening anxiety for himself and a deadly hatred for the Herods.
His first strictly logical thought was to send a courier to the tribune of Jerusalem with an order to remove the shields from the palace. Only then could he indulge his fury at the audacity of Antipas and the Sanhedrists in making good their threat to contact Tiberius, which he had thought only bluff.
Obviously he should never have gotten himself into this predicament in the first place. Hanging the trophies in Caesarea would have been quite enough for his purposes. Why, then, had he chosen Jerusalem? The reason he had given his council was: to neutralize any lingering memory Tiberius might have had of the old standards affair, which, technically, had been a symbolic disgrace for the emperor. The shields would honor Tiberius in the very city which had rejected his images—without offending the Jews. But was this the only reason? Pilate finally asked himself. Or had removal of the medallions really vexed the princeps? Crises have this merit, that they often shake a person into candor with himself. Pilate probed his motives and finally uncovered another explanation for his shields scheme. The standards had been a personal setback for him, in Jerusalem; the shields were to be his personal vindication, in Jerusalem. No one likes to be thwarted.
Yet even in his mood of personal honesty, Pilate branded Herod Antipas as the chief cause for his plight, not himself. He had sincerely thought the shields would not offend the Jews—there was the glittering precedent of the synagogues in Alexandria—and the objections of the chief priests were not supported by any Hebrew law. Nor had they proved their case logically. If Tiberius could only have heard the dialogue, he would surely have exonerated, no, applauded him for upholding Rome’s interests, Pilate felt. In this light, Antipas knew he was justified in putting up the kind of ornaments he wished in his own praetorium, and yet he switched out of character, wrapped himself in the mantle of Jewish piety, and went over Pilate’s head to complain, instead of providing his good offices to soothe the ruffled feelings between the prefect and the priests. The hypocrite! He objected to imageless shields, the man who offended Judaism by adorning his own palace in Tiberias with images of animals. It was another item Pilate wished he had recalled earlier.
Why did Antipas deal him this low a blow? Clear. If, at Rome, friends were informing on friends in their anxiety to appear anti-Sejanus, why not a rival accusing a rival in Judea? Though Sejanus had openly patronized Antipas, the tetrarch had always managed to keep a solid reserve of favor with Tiberius. By casting Pilate in the role of a disobedient prefect who was spurning the emperor’s directives, possibly with hints at Pilate’s previous dependence on Sejanus, Antipas would contrast favorably in the princeps’ estimation. And if it came to Pilate’s recall, who might better succeed him than the only man who had proved he could get on well with both Roman and Jew? “The tetrarch of Galilee…and Judea,” a virtual restoration of the kingdom of Herod the Great. Before this, it would not have been possible, since Antipas was disliked by the Sanhedrin. But now that he had successfully championed their cause before Rome, his stock would soar in Judea. After his marital misadventures, his antagonizing of King Aretas, and his beheading of the Baptizer, Herod Antipas had finally staged a diplomatic coup. The fact that it had also been at Pilate’s expense must have been doubly sweet to him, as it was twice as bitter for Pilate.