Before Claudius met with the delegation, Agrippa got his ear privately. He reported the Senate’s confusion and urged him to stand his ground, with diplomacy. Then Agrippa joined the rest of the delegation to echo the Senate’s line. Claudius delivered a handsome reply, promising he would be princeps in name only, and would fully involve the Senate in governing Rome. Having experienced the terror of life under his nephew, he could never be a tyrant.
At dawn the next day, the Senate met to hear the reply. Again Pilate was present, this time as a member of Chaerea’s committee to restore the Republic. Unlike many of their fellow praetorians, Chaerea, Sabinus, and others refused to consider Claudius, and now they strove to firm up the Senate in its resolve to restore the Republic. Pilate darted between benches in the chamber, trying to hold communications together among republican senators.
But their cause faced an ominous development. The Urban Cohorts on which the Senate was relying grew restless and impatient. Finally they demanded that the Senate choose a chief executive, yes, a princeps. Several candidates other than Claudius were discussed, with little enthusiasm. The more realistic senators, seeing what was inevitable, got up from their benches and hastened out of the chamber to be the first to congratulate Claudius on his increasingly obvious accession.
In dejection, Pilate watched Chaerea hurry to the rostrum to remind the senators that they had just dispatched one tyrant, and should not create another. Barely one hundred senators were left in the chamber—the full body numbered some six hundred—and the Urban Cohorts now raised their standards and marched off to swear allegiance to Claudius. With no military support, the republican cause collapsed. Slowly, mournfully, the remaining conscript fathers rose and filed out of the Senate chamber.
Pilate walked over to Cassius Chaerea. In their mutual depression, no words were possible. The restored Roman Republic had lasted barely forty-eight hours. Pilate clasped his friend’s shoulder and they finally left the Senate hall. As the last to leave, they were, in a sense, the last two citizens of the “Second Roman Republic.”
Claudius, with Agrippa at his side, was borne in triumph over to the Palatine, hailed by plaudits from the fickle Roman masses. As one of his first official acts, the now-emperor Claudius rewarded the man who was so instrumental in raising him to empire. In a speech before the Senate, he bestowed the rank of consul on Agrippa, and then announced: “Finally, beloved Friend, we name you king not only of those territories which you now hold, but also of Judea as well. We have recalled the prefect Marullus. You will recognize that you are now king over all the lands formerly ruled by your grandfather Herod the Great.”
Agrippa expressed profound gratitude to Claudius and the Senate, promising that Judea would be a most loyal ally of Rome. He then returned in triumph to Palestine, where the Jews welcomed him with an enthusiasm unparalleled since the days of the Maccabean princes. His first act after arriving in Jerusalem was to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and dedicate to the temple the golden chain which Caligula had given him.
From his home near the Proculeius mansion, Pilate surveyed these developments with less the dispassion of a spectator and more the involvement of a citizen. It was not jealousy at Agrippa’s phenomenal success which haunted him so much as the apparent destruction of the republican cause. Claudius might well have yielded to a restored senatorial republic had this foreign opportunist not tutored him to empire. An alien king had changed the course of Roman history. He suspected the Republic would never have another chance.
And Pilate lost a close friend in the process. Claudius had demanded a test vote in the case of Cassius Chaerea. Everyone in Rome, including the new emperor, agreed that Chaerea was a hero, that his tyrannicide had been a splendid deed for the state. But, in the grotesque political calculation of the time, the hero had to die. Claudius put it this way: “I am pleased that Caligula is gone. I am displeased that a princeps has been assassinated.” As an ominous precedent, it could not go unpunished. A deterrent for Claudius’s own safety was necessary. Chaerea would have to be sacrificed. The Senate agreed.
The tribune bore his fate with Stoic dignity, but Pilate wept for his friend as he accompanied him to the place of execution.
“Come off it, Pilate. Rome needs a ‘martyr’ about now anyway,” he quipped. “I was prepared for this when I killed the tyrant.”
“But the state needs you, Chaerea.”
“Sorry. In the words of Cato, ‘I don’t want to survive Liberty.’”
The tribune Lupus, a fellow conspirator, was also being marched out to execution, but he broke down in tears.
“Stop it, Lupus!” Chaerea remonstrated. “Put on your thick skin and play the wolf!” It was a pun on lupus, Latin for wolf.
A large crowd had gathered at the place of execution. Chaerea looked down at the executioner, a smaller man than he, and said, “Tell me, lad. Are you an old hand at this sort of thing, or is this the first time you’ve held a sword?”
“I’ve had a little practice,” he admitted. “Remember, I also worked for Caligula.”
“There’s a good chap. But do me a favor—Pilate, can I borrow that sword for the last time?” Chaerea had given him the sword with which he had dispatched Caligula.
“Here, lad. Use this one.”
“Why?”
“It has sentimental attachment. So long, Pilate. See you in the Elysian Fields. And you, Lupus, if I hear one yelp out of you, I’ll haunt you to Hades and back. See how easily it’s done now. Lay on, lad. It’s a privilege to die for the Republic!”
Chaerea bared his neck. It was severed in one blow. Lupus, who could not match that brand of courage, stuck his neck out gingerly. His execution required several strokes.
A revulsion at these unnecessary deaths swept Rome almost immediately. In remorse, Claudius tried to undo what had been done by releasing and restoring to office Chaerea’s fellow conspirator Sabinus, who was scheduled to die. But Sabinus thought his survival would be a breach of loyalty to his dead comrades, so he killed himself.
The progress from martyrdom to canonization was rapid. The Roman people showered gifts on the relatives of the dead conspirators and sacrificed to their shades, pleading with them to be gracious rather than vengeful at the gross public ingratitude.
To the consummate relief of Rome and the entire Empire, Claudius soon proved to be a decent and surprisingly able emperor, as finally even Pilate had to admit. Grandiloquently named Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the one-time court jester collaborated well with the Senate, as he had promised, and made that body more representative. He abolished the universally detested charge of maiestas to avoid any future legal reigns of terror. He introduced much-needed centralization and administrative efficiency in the imperial government. His program of public works improved Rome’s water supply and laced the provinces with highways and canals. Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, was reclaimed as port of Rome, which spared travelers the 140-mile trip south to Puteoli. Claudius’s foreign policy was similarly successful, and two years after his accession, he made a swift conquest of Britain. From that victory, his legions were able to bring more than sea shells back to Rome in triumph.