Mercifully, at the sight of Procula’s sure and graceful pace as she walked toward him, Pilate returned to normal, felt secure in his love, and took a slight step forward to meet his bride. Procula’s pronuba, or matron of honor, now led the bride over to the groom. The pair joined right hands.
“Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia,” said Procula, looking serenely into Pilate’s eyes.
A little lad called a camillus now presented a covered basket, from which the couple took a cake of coarse wheat bread and placed it upon an altar, offering prayers to Jupiter, Juno, and several gods of the countryside. Then a cry erupted from the assembly of guests, “Feliciter! Feliciter! Good luck! Happiness!” for the two were now man and wife.
A lavish wedding banquet commenced, with festivities lasting throughout the day. Proculeius was known to set a superb table for even the commonest meals, and this nuptial feast for his only daughter was exactly the gourmand’s delight everyone had anticipated. Of the seven courses which followed, roast boar was the principal dish, but there were also more exotic viands, including Phrygian grouse, Gallic chitterlings, roast peacock, Circeiian oysters, and—the crowning delight—Corsican mullet. At a time when Rome’s vulgar rich were inflicting fifteen- and twenty-course dinners on their friends, Proculeius, the guests agreed, had shown remarkable restraint in his menu.
To wash down his delicacies, Proculeius had invaded his deepest wine cellar and retrieved rich Chalybonium from Damascus and other eastern vintages in honor of the newlyweds’ approaching journey, as well as Setinian and Falernian, the finest local wines. Some were chilled with snow, which several of Proculeius’s slaves had carried down at great effort from Apennine mountain summits.
With the last course of the day-long feast came distribution of the wedding cake, traditionally served to guests on bay leaves. Then the darkening twilight reminded everyone that a final, important stage of the celebration had been reached.
“Pompa! Pompa! The Procession!” cried the guests. The time had come to escort the bride to her new husband’s home. While a band of flute-players and torchbearers assembled at the door of the mansion, Procula embraced her mother and started sobbing. The groom walked over and brutally tore his bride out of her mother’s arms, while she screamed all the louder. But all the guests were laughing and cheering, for the whole scene was just an act, the customary show of violence which etiquette required at Roman weddings ever since the Rape of the Sabine Women.
Procula quit struggling and broke into a radiant smile at her captor, kissing him happily before she took her place in the procession, which headed down the Via Tiburtina toward the heart of Rome. The flute-players led off, their music inviting any of the bystanding public to join the procession, as join they could and did. The torchbearers and younger wedding guests followed; next the bride herself, attended by two boys holding her hand on either side, while a third carried a wedding torch of twisted hawthorn in front of her as a charm against magic. The little camillus pranced along proudly with his basket. Bridesmaids just behind Procula were carrying the symbols of her future domestic life, the distaff and spindle. Then, almost as an afterthought, came the groom, who threw walnuts to the street urchins of the city as symbols of fertility. Last in the procession marched the parent Proculeii and Pontii, their older friends and relatives, and finally, a roistering honor guard of praetorian officers.
Since he would be leaving Rome shortly, Pilate had not purchased a house for himself. Instead, a fine old friend of the Pontii, who had retired to his mountain villa for the summer, graciously allowed the newlyweds to use his town house during their remaining weeks in Rome. It was here that the noisy, lusty, flame-flickering cavalcade delivered the bridal couple.
Now Procula was lifted over the threshold, for a chance stumble at the door would have been the worst possible omen for her future married life. Inside, Pilate offered her a glowing fire brand and a small vase of water, symbols of life and worship together. Procula accepted these, repeating a final time the wedding formula, “Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia,” and then lit the fireplace with the torch which had preceded her. The hearth blazed up in soaring triangles of flame—a good omen.
After Procula prayed to the gods for a happy marriage, her pronuba led her to the nuptial couch, which was situated in the atrium. Then she left, closing the door behind her. Pilate’s officer friends serenaded them just outside the door—a time-honored nuptial song. Then they too left.
Bride and groom looked at each other and smiled. It was the first silence and solitude they had experienced since dawn. He took off his now-wilted floral wreath. She did the same. He unwound himself from his suffocating toga, but she just stood there, shyly. Pilate pulled off her flaming red veil, gathered her in his arms, and kissed her tenderly. Then he lifted the lissome little figure off her feet and carried her over to the marital couch, which they would use that night and never again.
Chapter 3
Several weeks of post-nuptial events followed a large Roman wedding. On the evening after their marriage, Pilate and Procula hosted a second banquet, at which she offered her first sacrifice to the penates, another group of household deities who were first cousin to the lares. Procula still had some faith in these guardian gods, unlike her husband, who merely smiled indulgingly whenever she discussed religion, or “superstition,” as he styled it. Yet Pilate would have been reluctant to alter the traditional rituals and ceremonials. That would have been an affront to history, a violation of custom, even patriotism.
Additional dinner parties, given by various friends, consumed the rest of June. The adjustment to wedded life was particularly happy for Procula, since before her marriage she, like any Roman girl, had been closely guarded by her parents and only rarely appeared in public. Marriage was her literal emancipation. As matrona, she became a near-equal of men, completely in charge of the house, and free to come and go at will. Nowhere in the ancient world did women have so high a status as in Rome. Wrapped in her wifely garb, the ample and convoluted stola, Procula was now treated with deference throughout the city, be it dusty street or public theater, and no one, not even officers of the law, dared lay a hand on her.
Since Procula had inherited her grandfather’s canny business sense, Pilate cheerfully surrendered to her the management of their household affairs. He also discussed matters of state with her, particularly those now affecting his future career. When close friends wondered how they were getting on as newlyweds, she retorted, “Splendidly. We agree on everything…except politics and religion.” That regularly drew a chuckle, since the battle of the sexes in Rome was usually joined at these two arenas.
Surprised at the joy of married life, Pilate chided his bride, “Why didn’t you liberate me sooner from those barracks at the Castra Praetoria?” But one undercurrent of concern was troubling him. Despite Sejanus’s assurances that all was well with his overseas appointment, Pilate had not yet received word of a formal commission from Tiberius. Until he did, nothing could be regarded as settled, final.
A further complication was the absence of the princeps. For months he had kept announcing plans to take a long trip away from bothersome Rome, but had then canceled them so frequently that people began calling him “Callippides,” the famed Greek clown whose big act was to imitate the motions of running without moving an inch. But now Tiberius startled Rome by actually leaving town. His stated purpose was to go down to Campania to dedicate as a temple the house in which Augustus had died, but astrologers were predicting he would never return to Rome.