“You dare interrupt me during sentencing?” Caligula glared.
Pilate curbed his tongue and lowered his eyes to the highly polished, tessellated floor. The throbbing of his heart caused a welling, rhythmic pressure in his eardrums. He felt nauseated. Chilly sweat broke out and trickled down his spine.
“Tell me, Pilate.” Caligula smirked. “Can you imagine what being hurled from the Tarpeian Rock would be like? Or being decapitated in the Tullianum and having your body hooked down the Stairs of Mourning? Like Sejanus?”
Pilate’s eyes flashed about in horror. He saw that the Samaritans were smiling in eager anticipation.
“Well, you probably deserve such a fate, but in our gracious charity during this inauguration of our reign, we sentence you merely to confiscation of your entire estate and exile for life…You have three weeks to leave Italy—not a day longer. Perhaps…yes, perhaps Vienne in Gaul might be appropriate.”
Pilate’s thoughts wrestled in helpless inner turmoil. Caligula’s charity, a small consolation…It didn’t make sense. Trials for people far guiltier than he had been dismissed…What would Procula do now? Slowly he raised his eyes to the young princeps and saw only unbending resolve in the contemptuous cast of his countenance.
Caligula dismissed the Samaritan delegation with vague promises of compensation from Marullus, the new provincial governor whom he would shortly dispatch to Palestine. At the same time he warned them that Rome would tolerate no further armed meetings of any kind.
Agrippa walked over to Pilate, who was still anchored to the spot where he had been sentenced. “What’s the matter, Prefect?” he asked. “You feel you’re innocent, do you? What does that matter? Haven’t you ever condemned an innocent man?”
Pilate was instructed to remain where he was until Caligula and Agrippa had conducted the Samaritan delegation out of the palace. The tribune offered his sympathies and excused himself. Pilate slumped into a couch and propped his chin on his left hand. The gold ring which had conferred friend-of-Caesar status on him cut into his jaw. He pulled it off his finger and flung it out a window toward the Forum below.
Perhaps he should have been thinking of how best to break the news to Procula. He might have considered some kind of final appeal to the mercies of Caligula. Conceivably, he could have philosophized on the fragile bubble of contrarieties which is human existence. Or he might simply have succumbed to despair. Strangely, Pilate himself thought, he did none of these things. He merely reflected on Agrippa’s last remark to him and about the event it conjured up. Had he never condemned an innocent man? So this is how the prophet Jesus must have felt? No. Pilate had made a solid defense; Jesus had not. But no matter. They were both condemned. Where was justice? What is truth?
Caligula, Agrippa, and Macro returned, the last carefully closing the door behind them, so that only the four were now in the colonnaded hall.
“Well now, Pilate,” the emperor smiled. “Don’t look so crestfallen. Our little pantomime is over. No, you’re not going into exile, and we won’t take a solitary sesterce from your treasures. Ahaha! You stare at me? Certainly. I would too, under the circumstances.” He nudged Agrippa and Macro, both of whom were quaking with laughter at what they all found a tremendous joke.
“I suppose we do owe you an explanation, Pilate,” Caligula continued, in what he knew was a diabolical understatement. “Tomorrow the four Samaritans are leaving for Puteoli, well satisfied that they’ve succeeded in their mission of vengeance against you. It was a long trip for them, so the least we could do, for appearance’s sake, was to give you a severe sentence. This way I’ll be very popular with my new subjects in Samaria…even if, regrettably, it was at your expense. I must confess, Prefect, if I’d been at that mountain and faced that rebel army, I’d have taken the same measures.”
“I doubt it.” Agrippa smiled. “You’d have executed a good deal more than fourteen!”
Caligula let out a roar of laughter, nodding his head and slapping Agrippa’s back. Then he looked at Pilate and said, “There, there, man. I do believe you’re shedding a tear. Put your emotions in order, Prefect. Though it must be quite an ordeal to pass from the horror of threatened death, to the ignominy of exile, to full acquittal—all within a quarter of an hour.”
“But Excellency,” said Pilate with mounting elation, “what about Thallus? He’s not returning to Samaria…”
“Oh, he’s party to the plot. While he deplores your bloodshed, he’s glad you killed the false prophet. Of course, you can’t return to Palestine…or become famous in Rome, for that matter. That would ruin it all. Ahaha! Certainly you didn’t hope to be reinstated as prefect of Judea?”
“Oh, no. No, Princeps! Quite on the contrary. Ten years is enough for anyone there.”
“And if the Samaritans should ever learn that you’re still at large here in Rome, we’ll claim that you were recalled from exile for good behavior, or some such excuse. Anyway, by that time their tempers will have cooled too. Join us for lunch, Pilate.”
It was a simple luncheon on the Palatine. Its sybaritic luxury was limited to a mere eight courses and only four changes of wine. All the while, it seemed, the thin lips of Caligula, sticky with an exquisite vintage, were drawn into the same, inscrutable smile.
Between one of the middle courses, he emitted a long belch. Then, apropos of nothing, he asked, “Did you and Procula enjoy your trip up the Nile? Ha. Hahaha! And I can also tell you the exact length of your aqueduct from the Judean hills into Jerusalem…the number of pillars in your Tiberiéum in Caesarea.” Caligula continued to supply other minute details from Pilate’s administration in Judea which, of course, astounded him.
“Now how could I possibly know these items?” the princeps inquired, indulging in his favorite game, playing with people. “Do you really know who my friend Agrippa is, Pilate?”
“Not a descendant of the great Marcus Agrippa?”
“No, but named in his honor.” Agrippa smiled. “My full name is Julius Herod Agrippa.”
“Oh, the grandson of Herod the Great? The brother of Herodias, wife of Antipas?”
“The same.”
“I’ve certainly heard of you, but I don’t believe we’d ever met in Palestine.”
“No. I’ve been in Rome much of the time.”
For all his forty-seven years, Agrippa was still ruggedly handsome; more so, Pilate thought, than his painted sister Herodias was beautiful.
“Agrippa’s life story thus far makes the wanderings of Ulysses seem positively boring by comparison,” Caligula interjected. “He was brought up at the court of Tiberius as companion to his son Drusus, the one Sejanus poisoned. Then he sailed to Palestine—I still think it was to escape your creditors, Agrippa. There he got so depressed at leaving Mother Rome that he contemplated suicide. But his dear sister Herodias invited him to Galilee, where she got him some small government job to tide him over. What was it again, Agrippa?”
“Agoranomos, superintendent of the market at Tiberias.”
“But you know these Herodians; they never get along. Once he and Herod Antipas got drunk at a banquet and started trading exquisite insults, so naturally Agrippa had to leave Galilee. Now Pomponius Flaccus had just arrived as our new governor in Syria, and, would you believe it, Flaccus turned out to be Agrippa’s old comrade from Rome! So it was up to Antioch for our wandering friend here. But alas! The people of Damascus hired him to lobby in their behalf with Flaccus, who took that unkindly. So once again Agrippa played bankrupt vagabond. But, knowing that only Rome could improve his fate, he borrowed more money and sailed back to Italy. When he landed, my grandfather Tiberius first had him pay off old debts in Rome, then welcomed him back to court life on Capri, where he’s spent the last year tutoring me. Agrippa is now my closest friend. And do you know who loaned him the funds to pay off his debts? Our rich friend and sage whom you just met, the Samaritan Thallus!”