Pilate and the Standards

Once Archelaus’s ethnarchy had been made a province, the remaining brothers, Philip and Herod who was called Antipas, went on governing their own tetrarchies. Salome, when she died, left to Julia, the wife of Augustus, her own toparchy and Jamnia, as well as her palm groves in Phasaelis. When the rule of the Romans passed to Tiberius, Julia’s son, at the death of Augustus, who had governed the state for fifty-seven years, six months and two days, Herod and Philip kept their tetrarchies. Philip built the city of Caesarea at the springs of the Jordan, in the district of Paneas, and the city of Julias in lower Gaulanitis. Herod built Tiberias in Galilee, and in Perea another city named Julias after Julia. [a]

Pilate, who was sent to Judea as procurator by Tiberius, brought into Jerusalem by night, under cover, the images of Caesar that are called standards. When day came, this raised the greatest uproar among the Jews. Those who were near were horrified at the sight, for it meant that their laws had been trampled underfoot; they do not allow any image to be set up in the city. And on top of the townspeople’s indignation, the people of the countryside came streaming in together in crowds. They hurried to Pilate at Caesarea and begged him to take the standards out of Jerusalem and to respect their ancestral customs. When Pilate refused, they fell on their faces around his residence and lay there without moving for five days and as many nights. [d]

On the next day Pilate took his seat on the tribunal in the great stadium and summoned the crowd, as though he meant to give them an answer. Then he gave the soldiers the agreed signal to surround the Jews with their weapons. When the troops stood around them three deep, the Jews were struck dumb at the unexpected sight. Pilate said he would cut them to pieces unless they accepted Caesar’s images, and nodded to the soldiers to bare their swords. At that the Jews, as if at one signal, fell to the ground in a body, bent their necks aside, and shouted that they were ready to be killed rather than transgress the law. Pilate, astonished at the sheer intensity of their religious scruple, ordered the standards taken out of Jerusalem at once. [e]

After this he stirred up another disturbance by spending the sacred treasure, which is called Corbonas, on bringing in water, and he brought it from about fifty miles away. The people were indignant at this, and when Pilate came to Jerusalem they surrounded his tribunal and shouted against him. But he had foreseen their protest. He mixed armed soldiers, disguised in civilian clothes, into the crowd, forbade them to use their swords but ordered them to beat the shouters with clubs, and then gave the signal from the tribunal. The Jews were beaten, and many died of the blows, while many were trampled to death by their own people as they fled. Stunned by the fate of the dead, the crowd fell silent. [g]

Meanwhile Agrippa, the son of the Aristobulus whom his father Herod had put to death, came to Tiberius to accuse Herod the tetrarch. When Tiberius would not entertain the charge, Agrippa stayed on in Rome and paid court to men of note, above all to Gaius, the son of Germanicus, who was still a private citizen. Once, when he was entertaining him at dinner, after showing him every kind of courtesy, he finally lifted up his hands and openly prayed that he might soon see Gaius master of the world, with Tiberius dead. One of Agrippa’s household slaves reported this to Tiberius, who in his anger imprisoned Agrippa and kept him in prison under harsh treatment for six months, until he himself died, after ruling twenty-two years, six months and three days. [i]

When Gaius was proclaimed Caesar, he released Agrippa from his chains and made him king of Philip’s tetrarchy, for Philip had died. Agrippa’s arrival in his kingdom stirred Herod the tetrarch’s cravings out of envy. It was his wife Herodias above all who drove him to hope for a kingdom. She reproached him for his idleness and said that only because he would not sail to Caesar was he deprived of a greater rank: if Caesar had made Agrippa a king when he was a private citizen, would he hesitate to make Herod one when he was a tetrarch? Won over by this, Herod went to Gaius, who punished his greed with exile to Gaul; for Agrippa had followed him there to accuse him, and Gaius added Herod’s tetrarchy to Agrippa’s realm. So Herod died in Gaul, where his wife had shared his exile. [j]