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pilateswife.net>>appendix>>the evidence>>a very dangerous conspiracy

8. A VERY DANGEROUS CONSPIRACY

Ancient sources leave little doubt of Sejanus' threat to Tiberius Caesar. Cassius Dio writes (Dio 58.4.1-2) that Sejanus had grown so powerful "that the senators and the rest looked up to him as if he were actually emperor and held Tiberius in slight esteem;" Tiberius "feared they might declare his rival emperor outright." But Tiberius could not oppose Sejanus openly, so complete was Sejanus' control over the Praetorian Guard and the Senate, which he had won over "partly by the benefits he conferred, partly by the hopes he inspired, and partly by intimidation."

Our information on the actual organization of Sejanus' conspiracy is limited by the crucial two years -- 30 and 31 A.D. -- which have been lost from the existing manuscript of Tacitus' Annals. Suetonius, whose accounts of the Caesars are anecdotal biographical sketches rather than narrative histories, speaks matter-of-factly several times of "Sejanus' conspiracy." (Suet Tiberius 66, Claudius 6, Vitellius 2). However, Tacitus gives us some clues about the nature of that conspiracy in his account of the aftermath of Sejanus' plot, the bloody, maniacal "reign of terror" in which virtually anyone suspected of friendship with Sejanus was ruined or executed. One of those was Publius Vitellius, brother of Lucius Vitellius, who, unlike his brother, had long been a supporter of Sejanus. Publius Vitellius was accused of offering the keys of the Public Treasury (of which he was Prefect) and the Military Treasury "in aid of revolution." (Annals 5.10) We also hear of a Sextius Paconianus (Annals 6.3), "who had been the chosen instrument of Sejanus' in his treacherous designs against Gaius Caesar." From this it is possible to assume that the murder of Gaius Caligula, Tiberius' chosen successor, was to be one element of the plan -- a measure which would have been necessary only if Tiberius were also to die. And the sheer vehemence with which Tiberius pursued anyone who might have been complicit in the plot, and the savagery of the punishment meted out (bodies left to rot; even Sejanus' small children were murdered), suggests that Tiberius believed his life to have been at risk.

More specifics about the plot are given by Flavius Josephus in Antiquities 18.181: "A very dangerous conspiracy had been made against [Tiberius] by Sejanus.... Many members of the senate, and many of the freedmen joined with him, and the army was bribed, and the plot had made great progress." The armies which had accepted bribes may have been those of Upper and Lower Germany, both of which were commanded by men related by marriage to Sejanus. We can be virtually certain, however, that the Syrian legions did not accept such bribes. After Sejanus had been executed, Tiberius gave cash awards to both the Praetorian guard and the Syrian legions for remaining loyal to him (Suet Tiberius 48); these are the only such awards mentioned. To understand why the loyalty of four legions in distant Syria was on the same level of importance as the loyalty of Sejanus' own Praetorians, with their barracks in Rome and their swords virtually at the throats of the Senate, requires a closer look at the politics of Syria.

Rome maintained four legions in Syria, arrayed in their camps parallel to the Euphrates River. This army of the Euphrates was one of the most powerful armies in the world. Only the combined armies of the Upper and Lower Rhine, at four legions each, exceeded the Roman presence on the Syrian frontier -- and those armies policed a much more restive frontier, the collapse of which would threaten Rome itself with imminent invasion by barbarian hordes.

The danger on the Euphrates frontier was the omnipresent menace of Parthia, the powerful Persian empire that had administered the Roman army a stunning defeat at Carrhae in 53 B.C. The Parthians threatened not only the great cities of Syria and Asia Minor like Antioch and Ephesus, but also the lucrative provinces of Judea and Egypt; in particular, Rome feared the interruption of the all-important Egyptian grain supply. However, the Syrian legions in themselves were a threat to imperial authority. It was hardly lost on the successors of Julius Caesar that the first Caesar had been an ambitious provincial governor who had used his legions to grab supreme power. Philo (Gaius 259) describes how gingerly Gaius Caligula handled his governor of Syria, "for he was very careful with respect to governors of provinces, seeing that they had at all times the resources for making revolutions, especially if they happened to be... in command of powerful armies such as that on the Euphrates for the protection of Syria."

The governor of Syria in 31 A.D. was Lucius Aelius Lamia. He had been governor of Syria since 20 A.D., and had yet to set foot in his province. Historians are divided over whether this was Sejanus' doing or Tiberius'. Certainly the practice of keeping provincial governors on tight leashes in Rome was one way keeping their hands off those tempting legions; Tiberius' governor of Spain was also an absentee governor. However, the governors of Upper and Lower Germany, both of them Sejanus' men and both in command of huge armies, had little trouble going to their posts.

Lamia, however, does not appear to have been one of Sejanus men; we know from Suetonius (Suet Tiberius 48) that the Syrian legions had refused to erect Sejanus' statues next to Caesar's. But the most telling evidence of Lamia's loyalties is his fate following Sejanus' demise: Lamia was promptly rewarded with the plum position of Prefect of the City of Rome (Dio 58.19.5).

Sejanus evidently did not need the Syrian legions for the initial success of his coup; the Praetorian Guard and the German armies would have been more than sufficient. His probable objective was to deny the use of those legions to Tiberius. Dio gives a suggestion of Tiberius' requirements (Dio 58.13.1): "Tiberius for a time had been in great fear that Sejanus would occupy the city and sail against him, and so he had got ships in readiness in order to escape...." In the event of coup, the most loyal army of any size, and the most secure base for Tiberius' survival, would have been found in Syria. And certainly Sejanus knew that even though Tiberius' successes in Illyricum and Germany were decades behind him, Tiberius remained the most brilliant general of his day. Sejanus' power would never have been secure as long as Tiberius and his Syrian legions had access to the Egyptian grain supply.

Thus Syria was crucial to Sejanus' success. The question still remains of Pilate's role in the scheme. Here our evidence is only by inference -- but there is a great deal to infer. We don't know if Pilate came from a modest background and was sponsored by Sejanus. His cognomen (a sort of formal nickname that followed every Roman's nomen, or family name), gives us a clue, however. Pilate is the anglicized form of Pilatus; a pilatus was a legionary infantryman who carried the pilum, the Roman thrusting and throwing lance. Certainly Pilate could not have risen from infantryman to equestrian Prefect in one lifetime. But a cognomen was often passed from father to son, so it is possible that Pilate's father was the spear-carrier. Some exceptional legionaries rose through the ranks and were awarded the status of equestrian on their retirement; if Pilate's father had been one of them, that would explain Pilate's lofty position and lowly cognomen. Pilate's nomen, Pontius, also gives us a clue. The Pontiae were an extremely venerable aristocratic family in southern Italy, and unlikely to boast of spear-carriers in their recent lineage. But Pilate's grandfather or great-grandfather might have been a slave manumitted by the Pontiae, after which he would have customarily assumed their nomen. It has been estimated that half of all free Romans in Pilate's day were the descendants of freed slaves; there would have been nothing exceptional about Pilate having that sort of background.

We have no evidence of when or if Sejanus became Pilate's patron. Pilate's appointment as Prefect of Judea, however, coincides with Tiberius' retirement in 26 A.D. We have seen evidence that Tiberius did not approve of Pilate's performance in Judea; we have seen that Pilate's actions were consistent with Sejanus' anti-Semitic policies. It would stand to reason that Sejanus, not Tiberius, had Pilate where he wanted him: Looking after his interests in Judea. And the Prefect of Judea would have been the only Roman capable of surreptitiously tapping the only source of funds sufficient to bribe the Syrian legions -- the treasury of the Temple of Jerusalem.

So Pilate had the means and perhaps the obligation to join in Sejanus' plot. But is it possible that Pilate would have sought out Jewish dissidents as his unwitting accomplices?

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