  For five days the roads into Caesarea from Jerusalem and central Judaea were clogged with a motley throng of Jews pushing relentlessly toward the Procurator’s Palace. Here and there in the multitude rode a man or woman on a donkey, but countless hundreds trudged on foot, dust-covered and weary in every bone but more outraged in spirit. Then the dam that was Caesarea’s gates was inundated, and the flood of disgruntled Jewry, sweating, travel-soiled, frightened but still undaunted in its anger despite the long and tiresome journey, poured through the city to fill its market squares and surge upward toward Pilate’s house. The angry flood had burst upon the port city hardly two days behind the messengers sent by Sergius Paulus to warn the Procurator of the multitude’s approach. The Jews, the messengers informed Pilate, were swarming toward Caesarea to protest with all the vigor they could command his profanation, they called it, of their holy city through the display at the Tower of Antonia of the Roman army’s ensigns, including even the likenesses of the Emperor Tiberius. The morning after the Procurator’s departure, they revealed, the Jews had awakened to behold with horror the flaunted banners. But their vehement protests to the commander of the fortress had been unavailing. Sergius Paulus had told them with firmness that only a command of Pilate could restore the flame above the tower and once again sheathe the offending ensigns. So, alternately beating their breasts with loud lamentations and angrily calling down their Yahweh’s curses upon the invading Edomites, as they termed the Romans, they had surged into the roads and pushed northwestward to demand of the Procurator himself an end to the profanation of their Jerusalem. Five days ago these Jews had arrived at Caesarea, but five days of protesting, of threatening, of pleading, and of threatening again had not moved Pontius Pilate. “Rome is master,” declared the stubborn and proud Procurator to the Jews’ spokesmen; “the emblems of Rome’s mastery will not be removed or sheathed. My orders stand.” But the sons of Israel, too, were unyielding in their demands. “Your Emperor Augustus, your Emperor Tiberius”—Pilate took notice that they did not say “our” Emperor—“have respected our laws, which forbid the display of such emblems, and have been strict in honoring our religion,” the spokesman insisted. “Your Emperor Tiberius cannot but be angered by the refusal of the Procurator to respect in the same manner our ancient traditions.” “Go home!” Pilate ordered. “Get you back to Jerusalem. I, not you, speak for Tiberius. I was sent out by him to govern this province, and by the great Jove, I will govern it!” But the Jews did not go home. Hungry, discouraged, exhausted, they were not defeated. They swarmed about Pilate’s palace, they fell in their tracks on the marble of the esplanades to sleep fitfully when sheer exhaustion overtook them; they crowded the market places, they slept in rich men’s doorways. But they would not turn their backs on Caesarea. On the morning of the sixth day, Pilate called Longinus to the Palace. “Centurion,” he said, his face livid with anger, “since Sergius Paulus continues at Jerusalem, I wish you to take command of the troops here and put into execution the orders I am about to give you. Send out couriers to summon these Jews to come together in the Hippodrome; say that I will meet them there. In the meantime, disguise a sufficient number of your soldiers and place them about the amphitheater in advantageous positions so that should disorder arise among the Jews, you will be ready immediately to put it down.” Claudia had been listening to her husband. “But, Pilate, aren’t you creating a situation that will produce fighting between our troops and these Jews?” “And if there is bloodshed?” Pilate’s eyes flashed sudden anger. “Haven’t I been patient with these obstinate rebels? If they choose “Yes. But you have not agreed to have the ensigns sheathed. And until you do....” He turned upon her, his countenance flaming, his mood changed completely. “Do you stand with these stubborn provincials against Rome? Are you with them, or are you with me?” “Before you interrupted me, Procurator,” Claudia’s voice was as cold as her smile, “I was going to observe that in displaying the army’s emblems, you are really breaking a tradition, so far as I have been able to understand it, and this tradition may very well be a long-standing order of the Emperor and, indeed, of Augustus before him. I care not a fig about these Jews. Nor do I care about their High Priest or their Yahweh. I am concerned only with what will be the attitude of the Emperor and the Prefect Sejanus toward the Procurator as a result of this unprecedented breach of the established order.” She turned away, her head high. Pilate seemed taken aback; he looked at her somewhat sheepishly and licked his lips as though he were about to speak. But he said nothing. Instead, he turned abruptly to Longinus. “I take responsibility for the orders I give,” he said tersely. “My orders to you are unchanged.” Longinus saluted, then without a word turned on his heel and withdrew. By early afternoon the great concourse had filled with excited, chattering Jews. Their determined stand, they felt confident, had defeated the Procurator; their reminder that the Emperors had honored the Jews and their Yahweh and that Tiberius might not approve a course taken in defiance of the long-established tradition had frightened Pilate. He was calling them together, wasn’t he, to announce that he was withdrawing the hated emblems and to ask them to return home victors? But they had judged the Procurator wrongly. And they discovered their mistake as soon as he began to address the throng from his box high in the stands of the great oval. “For five days, and this is now the sixth, you have kept our Caesarea in turmoil. You have been obstinate and insubordinate and have shown little respect to the Procurator, who represents the Emperor and in this province personifies the power and majesty of the Empire. You have threatened him with reprisal, saying that he has flouted the orders of our Emperor. You were not only inhospitable in refusing to welcome the Procurator to Jerusalem, you were actually hostile. In being hostile to us, you have shown yourselves contemptuous of Rome and enemies of our Empire; in being stubbornly hateful to me, you have shown yourselves no friends of the Emperor.” Pilate paused, his face suffused with color as his anger grew with his listing of their offenses. Then he stood back on his heels, squared his shoulders, and held up his tightly clenched fist. “Now hear me, men of Judaea!” he shouted. “I have asked you to disperse and return to your homes. Stubbornly you have refused to heed my command. I am asking you again to abandon this unreasonable, senseless, and ill-advised effort and get yourselves outside the gates of Caesarea and on the roads that lead homeward. Hear me, by great Jove! This is my last command to you.” He leveled a shaking forefinger toward the multitude. “I have stationed my soldiers in disguise among you, and they are heavily armed. They have been instructed, upon my next command, to spring upon you and run you through with their swords.” But in the vast oval of the colosseum not an Israelite moved to obey him. Stolidly, calmly, they faced the Procurator; silence was heavy upon the great throng. Pilate’s face was twisted with wrath. “Then I must give the order, men of Judaea?” He shouted the question. Not a man moved. Then from the ranks nearest Pilate a man stepped forward a pace and held up his hand to speak. By his dress it was evident that he was one of the Temple leaders. “O noble Procurator,” he said in a loud voice, “though your soldiers run us through with swords until each of us has perished, we cannot submit to the profanation of God’s holy Temple; we cannot countenance without protest the treading into the dust of our God’s commandments. “Profanation! Profanation! All I hear is Rome’s profanation of your traditions. By all the gods, in every other land our Emperor is honored, his banners and his emblems, his likenesses paraded on our staffs, all these are hailed with shouts and acclamations! And yet you Jews....” Suddenly Pilate paused. The priestly leader who had just addressed him had fallen on his face in the dust of the great stadium, and beside him and behind him others now were prostrating themselves. Within moments every Jew in the place was lying face down upon the ground before the Procurator of Judaea. Mouth open, eyes darting from one area of the great concourse to another, aghast, Pilate stood silent. Then quietly he spoke to Longinus, who was standing near him. “Centurion, I cannot order men on their faces ran through with swords. It would be massacre.” “So it would be, Excellency, on their faces or standing, since they are defenseless.” Pilate turned back to face the prostrated multitude. “Stand on your feet!” he commanded. “I shall withhold for the moment at least my command to the soldiers.” Without a word being said, without a change of countenance even, the Jews rose to their feet and faced the Procurator. “Now send me your High Priest and his father-in-law the former High Priest Annas,” Pilate commanded. “No harm will be done them; this I swear by the great Jove.” Hours later Caiaphas and Annas returned from the conference with the Procurator at the palace. Mounting the rostrum from which Pilate had previously addressed them, Caiaphas held up his hand for silence. “Men of Israel, we have just concluded our meeting with the Procurator Pilate,” he announced. “An agreement has been reached. Now you may return in peace to your homes. The offensive emblems of Rome, the Procurator has assured us, will be removed so that they will no longer profane our holy places. The God of Israel, He is One!” “The God of Israel, He is One!” The multitude of suddenly exultant Jews echoed his words in a great chorus, and a hosanna of shouts swept wave upon wave across the immense arena. Then, laughing and chattering, the people began pushing toward the Hippodrome’s exits. And in all the throng not a man ventured to inquire of the High Priest what the terms of the agreement with Pilate had been. |
|
