[Previous: lines 918-963]
Jesus, having been condemned by the Sanhedrin, is brought before Pontius Pilate. Now read on!
Et iam tempus erat, cùm nondum Aurora relato------------
orta die albentes cœli discriminat oras. [965]
Iamque Deum vinctis manibus post terga trahebant
praesidis ad sedem, quô crimina quaereret ipse,
quem penes arbitrium, et morti damnaret acerbae.
Illo Iudaeam frenabat tempore, missus
Caesaris imperio Tiberi, Pilatus opimam [970]
Pontius, insigni Romanus origine gentis:
quem furibunda manus trepido est aggressa tumultu
vociferans: “Hunc dede neci, trabe fige merentem
infami auctorem scelerum, fraudumque potentem.”
Haec crebra ingeminant, densique ad limen inundant. [975]
Ille autem iuvenis procero in corpore fixos
intentusque oculos, intentusque ora tenebat;
(nondum illi dulcis flos prorsum evanuit aevi)
insolitam speciem, insolitos miratur honores
oris, et expleri nequit: hunc è stirpe fatetur [980]
aut Divûm, aut saltem magnorum è sanguine regum,
et secum sortem capti miseratur iniquam;
iamque favet, tacitusque agitat, siqua potis illum
impune eripere, et ruptis exolvere vinclis.
Quem sic alloquitur: “Quae te commissa fatigant? [985]
Fare age, qui casus? unde haec effusa repente
tempestas tibi? num tantis scelera impia mersum
implicuere malis? An Divûm tristior ira?
Unde domo? quo te memoras è sanguine cretum?
Aut quibus aspiras sceptris? quae debita regna?” [990]
Christus ad haec paucis: “Non huc ego criminis ergô
Protrahor. Haud turpi mihi mens obnoxia facto,
sed Patris, immensi cœli cui regia paret,
iussa sequor, nec regna moror mortalia, quamvis
haud equidem clara me regum è stirpe negârim.” [995]
Haec tantùm. Ille autem admirans decus oris honesti,
nunc hoc, nunc illo sermone affatur, et omnem
explorat. Sed responso non ampliùs heros
dignatur, saevo curarum exercitus aestu.
Tandem illum dux, ut turbam compescat acerbam, [1000]
servari iubet atque domo interiore recondit.
Now it was time for Aurora, the dawn,------------
to add distinctiveness to the sky’s expanse. [965]
Already God, his hands tied, was being led
to the governor’s throne, where criminals
against Rome’s laws were tried and sometimes condemned.
Here was Judea’s commander, reporting to
Emperor Tiberius Caesar—Pontius [970]
Pilate, from an eminent Roman family.
A furious mob besieged his palace, violent,
vociferous: “put him to death, nail him to that
beam for his infamous crimes and frauds!”
Yelling this, they gathered at his threshold. [975]
He, though, fixed his gaze on the tall figure of
the handsome man standing silent before him;
(the flower of youth was still blooming in him)
surprised at his fine appearance, his noble
and dignified form:—certain he must be [980]
descended from a god, or the bloodline of kings,
he took pity on the captive’s unjust fate;
tried to help, held back from judgement, and tried
to find some way to release him from his bonds.
Then he asked him: “Of what are you accused? [985]
What did you do? Why? Whence comes this sudden
storm against you? Has some wickedness truly
snared you in crime? Did you offend the gods?
Where are you from? What is your family line?
To what sceptres do you aspire? What reign?” [990]
Christ replied briefly: “No crime explains why
I’ve been dragged here. My motives are nothing base.
It is my Father, who rules the vast heavens,
that I follow; I seek no mortal power, though
I cannot deny my bloodline is royal.” [995]
That was all. Admiring his noble face,
He pressed with many more questions, curious
about everything. But the hero did not
reply, wrought as he was with savage cares.
At last the governor, to appease the mob, [1000]
ordered he be detained within his house.
And so Book 2 of the Christiad comes to an end. Vida's portrait of Pilate is highly sympathetic. His reluctance to prosecute Jesus is Biblical, but Vida, as a Roman Catholic, of course has his own reasons for wanting to cast Rome and Romans in as good a light as possible.
Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?Luke’s account [23:1-7] is much briefer than this, as is Matthew’s [27:1-14], although the latter includes the curious detail of Pilate’s (unnamed) wife’s dream: ‘When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.’
Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?
Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?
Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. [John 18: 33-38]
Vida doesn’t include this, nor does he bring-in the amazing, enduring question John puts into Pilate’s mouth: dicit ei Pilatus: Quid est veritas? It almost amounts to suppression, since this question, with its evasive, almost postmodern impertinence in the face of divine Truth itself, hardly reflects well on the questioner. Nietzsche, of course, approved:
Do I still need to say that in the whole of the New Testament there is only one honourable figure? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take Jewish affairs seriously — he could not convince himself to do this. One Jew more or less — what does it matter? ... The noble scorn of a Roman when faced with an unashamed mangling of the word ‘truth’ gave the New Testament its only statement of any value, — its critique, even its annihilation: ‘What is truth!’ [Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ (1888), 46]Modern historians have mostly been kind to Pilate, who spent ten years governing a distant and unruly territory. That he lasted as long as he did suggests he did a reasonable job, at least by Roman standards. Helen Bond notes that for the first six years of Pilate's tenure the Syrian legate Lamia was in Rome, which meant that Pilate couldn't simply send for troop reinforcements from the north if he had trouble. ‘Pilate would have had great difficulty in contacting [Lamia] if he needed the support of his legions, a situation that would mean that any potential uprising had to be put down quickly before it could escalate.’ [Bond, Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 15]. We can assume that his default, leadership-wise, was to act swiftly and with some violence in the face of any popular disquiet.
A case in point: around the same time as the events recorded in the NT Pilate had dealt with a different self-proclaimed Messiah, a Samaritan (conceivably a man called Dositheos) who tried to start a movement and possibly a rebellion. Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews [18.4.1-2], records that this messianic sect stormed Mount Gerizim, hoping to find artefacts they believed had been buried there by Moses. As the group was armed, Pilate decided their action was insurrectionary. He brought Roman troops to the scene, dispersing the gathering and killing many, including the ringleader. Executing messiahs was part of his job spec, we might say.
After this event other Samaritans, claiming the group killed had not been armed, complained to Lucius Vitellius the Elder, the governor of Syria. He (either because the complaint had genuine merit, and it was a way of calming the people he had to rule over, or else for reasons of Roman political jockeying-for-power) managed to get Pilate recalled to Rome to be judged by Tiberius. Tiberius however, died before his arrival (this dates the end of Pilate's governorship to AD 36/37). We don't know what happened to him after that. Some historians suggest that the fact he didn't return to Judea as governor suggests he was in some kind of disgrace; but a ten-year stint is a perfectly respectable one, and he might not have wanted to go back.
Paul L. Maier, after making the case for Pilate as a reasonably good governor, dismisses the later more lurid stories that attached to him.
The Pilate legends, of course, became exercises in morbid imagination, particularly in the Middle Ages. Probably the old Latin legend of the ‘Mors Pilati’ stimulated many of them. In this tale, Pilate committed suicide, and his body was thrown into the Tiber. But the demons and storms surrounding it were so terrifying that the corpse was taken out of the Tiber and cast into the Rhone instead, yet with similar results. Thence it was taken for burial to Swiss territories, where the body remained surprisingly active. [Paul L. Maier. ‘The Fate of Pontius Pilate’, Hermes 99:3 (1971), 368]‘Surprisingly active’ is nice understatement. Medieval legends built on this earlier text, adding stories of his restless corpse, ‘accompanied by squadrons of demons, disrupting localities from Vienne in France to Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland, causing storms, earthquake, and other havoc’. But that’s not the path Vida wishes to go down in this poem.
And so we come to the end of Book 2. Next up: Book 3!
Image at the head of the post: Christ before Pilate, by Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy (1881).
[Next: Book 3, lines 1-35]
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