To augment his own power, yes, or his representation of a power that was not his; but especially to have life, Caesar, to have the life that is born only, always, of the rupture of an earlier state of equilibrium.
He offended the Jewish powers for whom images are an abomination by having our soldiers parade through Jerusalem carrying standards bearing your image, and by placing in full view in the ancient palace of Herod votive shields bearing your name; have no doubt, Caesar, Pilate imagined his own name there, not yours. Judea is a distant land; why not play the part of an Emperor, feel he was a minor Caesar; had the Nazarite not proclaimed himself King of the Jews, and had not Pilate, without consulting Caesar, acted in Caesar’s name, and only to affirm that there was no King but Caesar? Imagine Pilate’s confusion, Sire, for as he asked himself these questions he was forced to add others: was the Nazarite the son of God or merely the phantom of God, a specter issued from the reverberating mirages of the desert? Had the representative of Tiberius killed the representative of God; had Tiberius killed God? Pilate, in order to overcome this quandary, had but one road: he persisted in unnecessarily subjugating those who were already subjugated, in provoking their passive resistance, in charging against the treasury of the temple the expenses of an aqueduct for Jerusalem and, finally, in acting with unnecessary cruelty against the Samaritans. He wished, an obscure emissary in an obscure confine of the Empire, to repeat his hour of glory: the moment when he had ordained the death of God. For he thought that if he had merely ordered the crucifixion of an inoffensive agitator, his deed was scarcely memorable. But if he had delivered to death the Son of God, memorable indeed was his glory, and his alone. Your agent, Caesar, could have executed in your name an insignificant medicaster and charlatan, but if he had crucified a God in Pilate’s name, then Pilate was greater than Tiberius.
I speculate, Caesar. The truth is that Pilate’s confused arrogance endangered our delicate accord with the Hebrews. To the end of salvaging the political reality, Vitellius, Legatus to Syria, had to intervene and depose Pilate. The ancient Procurator came to Rome to seek an audience, and you, wisely, refused; with political reality salvaged, whom would it interest to salvage the mental or administrative reality of a Pontius Pilate? I believe that Pilate went mad; he was seen along the shores of the Tiber, repeatedly washing his hands; finally he committed suicide by drowning himself in those same Tiberine waters, but his drowned corpse was rejected by the river. The people say that the body of Pontius Pilate is borne from river to river, carried to new waters where it is always rejected with repugnance by the flowing current in which no man may ever bathe twice, for as the philosopher says, no water that flows is twice the same. Pilate’s body has found no repose.
This is the end of the tale. I hope, Caesar, that this somber and harrowing account has in no way displeased you, and that now I have told it, this unimportant chronicle, this small mystery, will return to the oblivion and obscurity from which it never should have emerged.
IV
As he listened to his counselor’s narration, Caesar’s servants were singeing his legs with burning nutshells so the hair would grow soft. Afterward, distractedly, Tiberius allowed himself to be dressed; awkwardly, he made that sign of the cross upon his forehead and then, content and laughing, walked to his triclinium and there lay back to lunch.
“I like it, Theodorus, I like it; the sign of the cross; an instrument of torture and death; a sign associated with bodily pain; it pleases me … Why not make the sign of the cross the sign of the death, the dispersion, the multiplicity, the multitudinous, that I desire to follow my death? Hear me, counselor, if Rome is unique, if Rome is the apex of history, its unity must never be repeated lest Rome cease to be exceptional. Let all the kingdoms of the future, partial and dispersed, dream of the inimitable unity of Rome; let them struggle among themselves — yes — beneath the sign of that cross, let them fight and bleed for the privilege of occupying Rome, of becoming a second Rome; and from this growing fragmentation let new wars be born resulting in multiplied and absurd frontiers dividing minuscule kingdoms ruled by less and less important Caesars, like your Pilate, struggling to be a third Rome, and so on, and so on, without end … without end; oh, thank you, counselor; you have given me the weapons and sign of my desire, the cross of the slaves, the rebellion of a wandering Jew; let the Nazarite and his cross triumph and the power and unity of Rome will be dispersed like ashes and wind and dust … No important power will conquer us, not the Germans or the Parthians or the Dacians that today trouble our boundaries, not internal dissension, not license, lust, or decadence of character and discipline, not the loss of civic spirit, not the incapacity of imperial power to dominate the army, not the stagnation of commerce, low productivity, scarcity of gold and silver, not the depletion of the land, deforestation and drought, not plagues and illness, not our increasing disdain for work and subsequent dependence upon conquest, tribute, and slavery, none of these things, but a lugubrious Judaic philosophy of passivity and hope of a kingdom in Heaven … Can you imagine a greater triumph of my imagination, can you imagine anything more ridiculous, Theodoras, than the triumph of the most obscure of the Hebraic redeemers and the sign derived from the rack of his torture?”
He laughed; as Tiberius drained the last cup, Theodoras asked: “Does what you have said imply an order, Caesar?”
“Let’s play mora…”
Each placed his hands behind his back and then quickly extended them. “One,” said the counselor. “Three,” said Caesar. Tiberius saw perfectly the number of fingers revealed by Theodorus; Theodorus was painfully mistaken: Tiberius also showed three fingers. Caesar had not looked, he had not guessed; he merely repeated the number he always chose. He always did so; he always won. He had no time to guess or look; he had time only to choose and repeat what he had chosen.
“Yes,” said Tiberius, “it is an order.”
“How must I execute it?”
“My augur says that every living man has thirty phantoms behind him; three times ten; that is the precise figure of our dead ancestors. I have added to that with a number of murders.”
“You do well, Caesar; perhaps the function of power is to increase the number of phantoms … Will you bequeath your Empire to them?”
“I have no descendants, Theodorus; woe is me; if I had, I would have to divide the Empire among three sons, and make them promise they would divide their three kingdoms among their nine sons, and so on in succession; and in memory of our founding, I would also make them promise to copulate with she-wolves so that the heirs would be born from these beasts, and that as a secret jest, each bears the incarnate cross of the Nazarite upon his back; they would be my heirs, but in a different time, in a time of defeat and dispersion … Am I raving, counselor?”
“No, Caesar; you wish to bequeath an empire of phantoms, and we have phantoms to spare. Your desires, if they are true, can be fulfilled.”
“Enough. I have no offspring. I feel drowsy. Let me sleep, Theodorus.”