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XIX Day before the Ides of Martius. Second hour of the night. [Wednesday, March 14, c. 7:00 p.m.] A messenger came in the last hour of the night, to summon me back to Antonia. I left the palace before dawn. I have seen it a good measure colder here in previous years, yet this seemed as cold as any morning I have ever suffered. The porters were already taking their burdens around and the day-workers were about, sweeping the streets and carrying out dung. I could hear the bleating from the sheep market. Antonia was also busy -- soldiers moving through the torchlit arcades. I was directed to the main tower. A notary waited in Pilate's anteroom. This man was quiet and appeared grim. I did not presume at once where he had been. But when I smelled the perfume upon entering Pilate's bedroom, I knew. Pilate had just come from the bath. His skin was flushed from his shave. He wore a toga as though he would go at once to hear cases. Yet his bloodshot eyes appeared like burning coals, so dark were the rings around them -- like a woman's black eye paint. He has had a cupboard moved from Herod's old palace into that room. It is an immense gilded thing occupying almost as much space as the couch. He had opened it and stood before it as though he were offering to his household gods. He was so rapt that he did not even regard my approach. I looked into the cupboard as he stood there. Many of the objects I have seen previously: The Arretine bowls, the Priapus cup, the small paintings -- his Briseis and Achilles, Milanion and Atalanta, Jupiter and Danae. He also has several new paintings of sexual acrobats in myriad postures. Yet there is one small painting, also new, which my eyes located at once and could not leave: A man coupling with a woman from behind. Around his partner's neck he has placed a thin red cord. A single fine line. The painter has made the woman's tiny face dark from strangulation. One wonders if the painter was a witness, so truthful is that face. The face I have seen in Pilate's mirrors. He turned to me. He had been gazing on these objects with the same absent eyes he now directed at me. "You will be interested in this," he said. "We have learned some things from a Jew we took yesterday." He snapped his fingers. The notary entered. He carried his tablets with him. "Begin with where he began to talk," Pilate said. The notary opened one of his tablets and began to read: "The Jew was asked what he did at the Pesah last year. The Jew answered: 'I told the people that Pilate is a thief. He stole from the sacred treasury.' He was asked who told him to tell this to the crowd. He answered: 'Nitos.' Question: 'Who is Nitos?' His answer: 'A servant of Jonathan.' 'Who is Jonathan?' Answer: 'The captain of the Temple Guard.'" Pilate said, "And he is Caiaphas' brother-in-law." "That merely proves what we already know," I said to Pilate. "That Caiaphas authored our troubles at the Pesah last year." Pilate said to the notary, "Tell my wife the Jew's answer when we asked who paid him to attack the people going over to Beth-Hanania yesterday?" The notary opened a second tablet. "Answer: 'Nitos.'" I said, "So Caiaphas intends to employ the same thugs to cause trouble this year." Pilate said, "I don't know what he intends. Listen." He told the notary, "Now begin with his answer about what has happened at Beth-Hanania." "'A lying son of a whore says he is a prophet who made a dead man get up and walk.' Question: 'What were you told to do on the Mount of Olives.' Answer: 'Beat the lepers' sons who went up there. Keep them from Beth-Hanania. Keep them from coming back to the city.' Question: 'Why were you told to do this?' Answer: 'To keep the shit-haulers from repeating the false prophet's lies.'" Pilate waved his hand and the notary went out. He gestured that I could sit on the couch. I shook my head. He remained facing me. "I've learned what happened over at Beth-Hanania," he said. "Evidently a magus who claims to be this man Joakanen got a dead man out of his tomb -- you'll hardly be surprised to learn that there were any number of witnesses present. The mob are saying that this fraud proves their god will restore the dead to life." "Yes. This Yom Adonai business Erginus told me about. It's the peculiar delusion of the poor." "In this case, evidently the rich are also involved. The man who was restored to life is a landowner over there. Eleazar ben Eleazar. They live in one of the villas above Beth-Hanania. The elder Eleazar died not long ago -- I heard a case regarding him, the second year here. A partnership with a Greek that didn't go right. My informant tells me there's a daughter who has something of a reputation in the city. They're outsiders, but I can't connect them to the old Hasmonean families. As I'm told, the entire trick was staged credibly enough -- the man wrapped and sealed up in a tomb for several days." "I may have missed his funeral by a few hours," I said. I told him about the mourners I had seen on my return from Jericho. Pilate said, "Do you wonder why a rich man would permit himself to become a magus' boy? Surely not for the benefit of the turd-burners and street-sweepers who believe that crap." "I would presume this was done to make trouble for Caiaphas. He's frightened by the crowd's interest in this sign. Otherwise he wouldn't have sent his thugs to try to keep word of it from going around." "Wouldn't the crowd regard the raising up of a poor man as a more promising sign? You don't hear the Jew god promising to deliver the rich from their oppressors. If B'nai-Zadok have sponsored this, one would think it prudent for their sponsorship to remain invisible." "Perhaps they didn't sponsor it. You said this man Eleazar doesn't have a Hasmonean connection." "They're not one of the old client families. But they're outsiders nevertheless. Possibly there is a connection. Regardless, you still have the question of why the rich man." He thought about this, puckering his lips. "The hideless pricks will drive us mad." "Perhaps the same informant who anticipated this sign will offer us an explanation. Should we go back to Eban ben Onias?" "I'm uneasy with informants who provide information at their convenience. I'll find someone on this." He looked at me silently. I was eager to go. Then he said, "You should know that shortly before you arrived here my runner came up from Caesarea -- having traveled all night. He says that L.---'s galley put on water and food yesterday afternoon. I would expect that if they have not already left for Joppa at this hour, their departure is imminent." "Is L.--- presently in Joppa?" "No. He has set himself up in Caesar's house at Emmaus. Perhaps he enjoys the bath there. His people have been out in the town, talking to the local men. We believe they're looking for guides. Possibly they're also hiring bandits." "Does he intend to stage his own uprising?" "I don't know. Perhaps he intends to defend himself there. Or he's looking for assistance in getting his people up from Joppa. Whatever the case, this proves we haven't seen the last of him." I did not tell Pilate that I now share his conviction. Instead, I asked, "What will you do if he brings his soldiers up from Joppa?" He turned and closed the massive doors of his cupboard. Without turning back to me, he said, "You can get on with your business." So I returned here. I went about the rest of the day as usual. L. V-- may return tomorrow. He may return in a week. The exact time of his coming remains a mystery only because I do not wish to find it in the hidden volumes of the soul. |
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Who is Eleazar ben Eleazar? In the New Testament, the Hebrew name Eleazar ("ben Eleazar" meant "son of Eleazar") is rendered into the Greek "Lazarus." Thus we almost certainly have here the raising of Lazarus. This episode was known only from the John gospel until 1958, when Morton Smith, a professor of Oriental Religions at Columbia University, discovered the text of a letter attributed to the celebrated second-century Christian writer Clement of Alexandria. Clement, by his own description, quoted "word for word" the partial text of a Christian gospel he attributed to the apostle Mark. That text describes how Jesus, on the road to Bethany, was beseeched by a woman whose brother had just died; Jesus went with her into the garden where the tomb was located. At once "A great cry was heard from the tomb," whereupon Jesus rolled the stone from the door, walked into the tomb, stretched out his hand to the "youth" inside, and raised him up. "And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich." In the letter in which he repeated this story, Clement told his correspondent that Mark had composed a second, "more spiritual" gospel, and had left the earlier version with the raising of the "youth" to the church in Alexandria, to be read only by those "who are being initiated into the great mysteries." Modern text analysts suggest that this so-called "Secret Mark" was the earliest version of the Mark Gospel. Thus, although the raising of Lazarus is found only in John, the most recent of the New Testament gospels (composed at the end of the first century), the story most likely belongs to the earliest Christian tradition. In John, Lazarus has two sisters, Martha and Mary; the latter anoints Jesus' feet with costly nard and wipes them with her hair in John 12.3. This rather profligate and suggestive behavior, recast as a prophetic anointing of Jesus' body just before his death, may recall a young woman with the sort of "reputation" mentioned by Pilate. For more on Secret Mark, the raising of the Lazarus, and Jesus'
interest in wealthy patrons, see And
He Was Rich in the appendix.
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(C) 2004 Michael Ennis |
Pilate evidently had a collection of what we would regard as pornography,
though the ancient Romans attached little if any moral opprobrium
to depictions of mythological lovers or sexual acrobats in unusual
positions; such paintings might appear in respectable upper-class
bedrooms and dining rooms (there are many surviving example at Pompeii).
But we have as yet found no similar depictions of erotic asphyxia,
though we can assume that this dangerous technique would not have
escaped discovery by a culture as sexually active and inventive
as ancient Rome's. 