Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Life and Times of Pontius Pilate, the Law West of the Jordan
History, other than those weird little Jack Chick booklets and stuff about The Lizard People on the GossipNet, says little of Pontius Pilate. Apparently his career in the Roman diplomatic was fairly short before he was retired by suicide.
A life of loyal public service under the emperors was often rewarded with death, which was probably better than a farewell kiss from the president.
As a colonial governor Pilate would have been expected to keep the peace among all sorts of peoples, not because of the benevolence of Tiberius but because tax-tax is always better than war-war (as Churchill did not say).
One wonders if in his corner office Pilate displayed pictures of himself shaking hands with famous people, or maybe ordering their executions, and plaques from the Little Gladiator teams he sponsored. Did he give speeches at local business dinners? “I am Praefectvs Pontivs Pilatvs, but you may call me Poncho. I’m from Rome, and I’m here to help you grow your businesses.”
No doubt the after-dinner speech included a few wheezes: “Say, boys, you’ll like this one. A Greek, a Roman, and a Jew walk into a bar owned by an Egyptian…”
Pontius Pilate probably gave motivational speeches (which in itself should be a death penalty offense) and talked about thinking outside the box outside of which he never thought himself, and kept his resume updated in hopes of a better gig in a happier colony, maybe Crete or Cyprus or Hispania.
He would have been subjected to scrutiny by spies and investigations by special prosecutors, and in turn would have sent around the highways and byways of the Empire his own spies and, when he felt he had the power and the connections to get rid of some old pal he didn’t now like, special prosecutors under his authority.
His staff would have kept his files cross-indexed and neat, and at midday he probably joined the boys for a two-falernian lunch, properly submitted under his expense account.
Pilate named roads and bridges and theatres for his Emperor, had the usual suspects executed for the entertainment of The People, bless them, and probably told anti-Semitic jokes. He was so dull, safe, successful, and predictable that he was governor for some ten years before being recalled to Rome.
Nothing reliable is known of his end. Pilate is said to have been required to commit suicide instead of being given a cheap Seiko sun-dial as a memento, but perhaps he did indeed retire to his vineyards in central Italy, and took leisurely afternoons to write his memoirs, in which few were interested and which eventually were used by Germanic invaders to start a fire, and so lost to history.
Whether he remembered one Jesus of Nazareth is unknown.
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