II. His Office. — Pilate Mas the sixth Roman procura- tor of Judaea (Matt, xxvii, 2; Mark xv, 1 ; Luke iii, 1 ; John xviii, xix). under whom our Lord taught, suffered, and died (Acts iii, 13 ; iv, 27 ; xiii, 28 ; 1 Tim. vi, 13). The testimony of Tacitus on this point is no less clear than it is important; for it fixes beyond a doubt the time when the foundations of our religion were laid. " The author of that name (Christian) or sect was Christ, who was capitally punished in the reign of Tiberius by Pontius Pilate" (Auctor nominis ejus Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per Procuratorem Pontium Pilatum sup- plicio affectus est).
A procurator (t7riVpo7roc, Philo, Leg. ad Caium, and Josephus, War, ii, 9, 2 ; but less correctly ijye/jwi/, Matt. xxvii, 2; and Josephus, Ant. xviii, 3, 1) was generally a Roman knight, appointed to act under the governor of a province as collector of the revenue, and judge in causes connected with it. Strictly speaking, procura- tores Ccesaris were only required in the imperial prov- inces, i. e. those which, according to the constitution of Augustus, were reserved for the special administration of the emperor, without the intervention of the senate and people, and governed by his legate. In the sena- torial provinces, governed by proconsuls, the corre- sponding duties were discharged by quaestors. Yet it appears that sometimes procuratores were appointed in those provinces also, to collect certain dues of the f sens (the emperor's special revenue), as distinguished from those of the cerarium (the revenue administered by the senate). Sometimes in a small territory, especially in one contiguous to a larger province, and dependent upon it, the procurator was head of the administration, and had full military and judicial authority, though he was responsible to the governor of the neighboring province. Thus Judaea was attached to Syria upon the deposition of Archelaus (A.D. 6), and a procurator appointed to govern it, with Caesarea for its capital. Already, dur- ing a temporary absence of Archelaus, it had been in charge of the procurator Sabinus; then, after the eth- nareh's banishment, came Coponius; the third procu- rator was M. Ambivius; the fourth Annius Rufus; the fifth Valerius Gratns; and the sixth Pontius Pilate (Josephus, A nt. xviii, 2, 2), who was appointed A.D. 25-6, in the twelfth year of Tiberius. He held his of- fice for a period of ten years (Josephus, A nt. xviii, 10, 2). The agreement on this point between the accounts in the New Testament and those supplied by Josephus is entire and satisfactory. It has been exhibited in de- tail by the learned, accurate, and candid Lardner (i, 150- 389, Lond. 1827). These procurators had their head- quarters at Caesarea, which is called by Tacitus Judaza, caput ; but they took up their temporary abode at Je- rusalem on occasion of the great feasts, as a measure of precaution against any popular outbreak. See Pro- curator.
III. His Life.— I. Of the early history of Pilate we know nothing; but a German legend fills up the gap strangely enough. Pilate is the bastard son of Tyrus, king of Mayence. His father sends him to Rome as a hostage. There he is guilty of a murder; but being sent to Pontus, rises into notice as subduing the barba- rous tribes there, receives in consequence the new name of Pontius, and is sent to Judaea. It has been suggested
PILATE
200
PILATE
that the twenty-second legion, which was in Palestine at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and was af- terwards Btati id at Mayence, may have been in this
case either the bearers of the tradition or the inventors of the fable (comp. Vilmar, Deutsc/u NationaUiteraiur, i, 217). 2. His Official Career. — (1.) #« Administration in
General.— Oi f Pilate's first acts was to remove the
headquarters of the army from Csesarea to Jerusalem. The soldiers of course took with them their standards, bearing the image of the emperor, into the Holy <ity. Pilate had been obliged to send them in by night, and there were no bounds to the rage of the people on dis- covering what had thus been done. They poured down in crowds i" ( tesarea, where the procurator was then re- siding, and besought him to remove the images. After five days of discussion he gave the signal to some con- cealed soldiers to surround i lie petitioners and put them to death unless they ceased to trouble him; but this only strengthened their determination, and they de- clared themselves ready rather to submit to death than forego their resistance to an idolatrous innovation. Pi- late thru yielded, and the Standards were by his orders brought down to Caesarea (Josephus, Ant, xviii, 3, 12; War, ii. 9, 2 I). No previous governor had ventured on such an outrage. Herod the Great, il is true, had placed the Roman eagle on one of his new buildings; but this had been followed by a violent outbreak, and the attempt had not been repeated | Ewald, Gesckichte, i\ . 509 l. The extent to which the scruples of the Jews on tlii> point were respected by the Roman governors is shown by the fact that no effigy of either god or em- peror is found on the money coined by them in Judaea before the war under Nero (ibid, v, 33, referring to De Saulcy, Recherches sur la Numismatique judaique, pt, viii, ix). Assuming this, the denarius with Caesar's image and superscription of Matt, xxiii must have been a coin from the Roman mint, or that of some other province. The latter was probably current for the common purposes of life. The shekel alone was re- ceived as a Temple-offering. See Abomination of Dksolation.