News of the still tempestuous judiciary climate at Rome was hardly consoling to a governor returning in disgrace to face a hearing before the emperor, and Pilate left Brundisium in severe depression. He had hoped that the more than five years which had elapsed since the fall of Sejanus would have blunted Tiberius’s resentment. Apparently, time had not healed.
Procula tried to cheer him as they traveled up the Appian Way, but inwardly she was as concerned as he. Their anxiety focused not on the accuracy of the Samaritan charges, but on the prospect of appearing before Tiberius in his present mood. They reviewed his chances, now in deadly earnest, since the long journey was ending and the confrontation would probably take place shortly.
If the princeps restricted the hearing solely to the Samaritan indictment, Pilate felt he could clear himself. Before leaving Caesarea, he had taken depositions from all the officers who had accompanied him on the expedition to Mount Gerizim, and these testified to the dangerous nature of the tumult, the fact that the Samaritans were armed, and, above all, that they refused to lay down their weapons. In any of Rome’s provinces, this would spell treason. Pilate’s role in the field executions which followed, while perhaps less defensible, was not more than what other Roman prefects would have done in a similar situation.
But would Tiberius limit his hearing to the Samaritan affair alone? In his present mood, he might easily use it as a wedge with which to pry open the Pandora’s Box of all Pilate’s administrative troubles. And if he chose to resurrect the Jewish complaints and probe his past relationship with Sejanus, then there was added danger. And even if Pilate were to make a good defense of his administration, he might achieve little if the seventy-seven-year-old princeps were approaching the illogic of senility. Pilate’s mood took on blacker hue.
One recent precedent caused him special anxiety. Pomponius Labeo, who had been a provincial prefect like Pilate, was arraigned on charges of maladministration in the Balkans. Shorn immediately of the title “Caesar’s friend,” Labeo slashed his wrists and bled to death rather than face trial. Suicide was very popular, for if a man were tried and condemned he forfeited his estate and was debarred from private burial. But if he passed sentence on himself by self-destruction, his will was respected and the body interred.
Ever since he heard the grim report, Pilate had trouble shaking it from consciousness, for there were alarming parallels in his case. For the first time now, the possibility had at least to be considered. If he were to commit suicide rather than trusting the dubious mercies of Tiberius, Procula would inherit his estate untouched and could resume her place in Roman society without disgrace. Her own grandfather had taken his life by swallowing gypsum to permanently soothe his stomach pains, but the suicide had not tarnished his reputation or the family’s.
As they traveled northward up the Italian boot, a feeling of utter dejection swept Pilate. Fear of the princeps was being replaced with a sense of total futility at having dedicated the best decade in his life to govern a province from which he was now returning under a cloud. Life was a tedious exercise in frustration, a training ground for meaninglessness, an arena without significance. Perhaps suicide was not only a viable option, but the proper one. Even something of nobility, a sacrifice for the security of Procula.
They now reached Caudium, where Pilate’s aged relatives rejoiced to see them again. But it was a reunion sobered by news of what lay ahead for Pilate. He himself put on a front of unconcern for his family’s benefit and shared no dark thoughts with them or Procula. Inwardly, however, he was struggling with a personal battle of decision. Before landing in Italy, he had given no thought to self-destruction, but after the dismal reports of Tiberius’s temperament and the pessimistic calculation of his own future, he was less surprised at the arguments he could muster in its favor.
Pilate spent no more than a week at Caudium, lest he jeopardize his case for failing to announce his arrival. Generally, the “three-month rule” applied to returning governors. Once their successors arrived, ex-prefects were to leave their provinces at once and not delay their return to Rome longer than three months. His time was nearly up.
He decided that Procula should stay in the security of Caudium. In case anything happened to him, the Pontii were to conduct her safely to the Proculeii in Rome. Despite Procula’s remonstrances, he insisted on facing his fate alone. They kissed very tenderly, very emotionally at parting, a bittersweet reminder that their love had not really suffered through the ten and a half years of their marriage.
Without her knowledge, Pilate had deposited his last will and testament with the municipal magistrate of Caudium. Everything was now arranged to suit either alternative: confrontation with the princeps, or a lonely suicide.
Soon after he left Caudium, however, that issue was resolved. Pilate finally made up his mind. A sense of personal dignity and a hope bound up with his love for Procula decided the matter. He would fight for his honor; he would face the princeps.
Tiberius was no longer near Rome, he had learned, but sojourning in a villa at Misenum on the Bay of Naples. And the bay was nearby, just thirty miles west of Caudium across the Apennines. With one aide and several large bundles of documents, he made the short trip on the Ides of March in 37 A.D. After a day of rugged travel, the familiar view unfolded despite the blustery gray weather: the majesty of Mount Vesuvius to the left, Neapolis before them, and the port of Puteoli further west. Since leaving that harbor a decade earlier, Pilate had now come full circle.
Just around the bend of the bay’s shoreline beyond Puteoli, the promontory of Misenum pointed its slim finger toward Capri. The jewel ringing that finger was the palatial villa where Tiberius was staying. As they drew up to the gates of the mansion, his aide informed the captain of a praetorian squad at the entrance, “Pontius Pilatus, praefectus Iudaeae, voluit colloqui cum Naevio Sertorio Macrone, praefecto praetoria.” His contact for arranging an audience with Tiberius would be the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Naevius Sertorius Macro, the man who had cleverly baited the trap which snared his predecessor Sejanus.
One of the guards delivered the message. They waited. Suddenly a dozen couriers streaked out of the villa, mounted their horses, and took off in a furious gallop toward Puteoli. Pilate and his aide looked astonished. Inside the mansion, a welling sound of excitement now reached the level of a general din. Then wild cheering broke out. Baffled, Pilate asked the guards, “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” replied one of them. “Unless the doctor’s announced that the princeps is recovering—”
“He’s ill?”
“Of course. Haven’t you heard? Hard breathing all week…fever. He wouldn’t doctor though.”
Just then a wildly jubilant group poured out of the villa, waving their arms and cheering a tall, slender youth with broad forehead and hollow eyes. Though balding at the crown, the rest of his body was hirsute. He was smiling broadly at the acclaim.
“LONG LIVE GAIUS CAESAR!” the people cried while clustering about Caligula, trying to kiss his hand. “The tyrant is dead! The shade of Tiberius be damned! LONG LIVE GAIUS CAESAR!”
Caligula was beaming, acknowledging the adulation with both hairy arms raised. He pointed to Tiberius’s signet ring on his left hand, and the people raised a triumphant shout.