Part 2

"How would the Jews impose their holy law on outsiders when they themselves tear one another apart to interpret that law? Split up into twenty rival sects, you've seen them, Lamia, holding their scrolls in public squares, insulting each other and pulling each other's beards. You've seen them, on the top step of the temple's crepidoma, ripping their grimy robes in grief around some wretch in a prophetic trance. They cannot imagine a peaceful argument, with a soul that's tranquil, about the numinous, which is veiled nevertheless and full of uncertainty. The nature of the immortal gods remains a mystery to us that we are unable to penetrate. I do however think it wise to believe in divine providence. But the Jews are devoid of philosophy and cannot tolerate a diversity of opinions. On the contrary, they judge to be worthy of the ultimate penalty those who express feelings on the subject of God at odds with what their law states about Him. And as, since they have been under Roman rule, the death sentences pronounced by their courts can only be carried out with the approval of the proconsul or the procurator they put constant pressure on Roman magistrates to support their lethal decrees. They assail the praetorium with their demands for capital punishment. A hundred times I've seen them, thronging round me, rich and poor, clinging to their priests, angrily laying siege to my ivory seat, pulling at the folds of my toga and the thongs of my sandals, clamouring for, demanding of me the death of some unfortunate whose crime I was unable to discern and whom I could only hold to be as mad as his accusers. What am I saying? A hundred times? It was every day, every hour of the day. And yet I had to implement their law as I did ours, since Rome had set me up not to destroy but to support their customs, and I had power to pardon or to punish over them. At first I tried to make them see reason, I strove to save their wretched victims from punishment. But this leniency on my part only annoyed them the more. They battened on their prey beating with their wings and pecking with their beaks like vultures. Their priests wrote to Caesar I was infringing their law, and their petitions, backed up by Vitellius, made me much frowned upon. How often the desire came to me to make, as the Greeks say, both the accused and their judges food for the crows! Don't think, Lamia, that I harbour feelings of rancour and senile rage against this people who got the better of all that was Roman and peaceable in me. But I can foresee all too well the drastic action that they will oblige us to take with them sooner or later. If we can't govern them, we'll have to destroy them. Do not doubt that, ever rebellious, hatching plots against us in their overheated souls, they will burst out one day with a fury next to which the wrath of the Numidians and the threat posed by the Parthians will be child's play. They nurture in the shadow crazy hopes and madly conspire at our downfall. How can it be otherwise, given they await, if their prophets are to be believed, a prince of their bloodline who will rule the world? We shall never overcome this people. They need to be obliterated. We need to raze Jerusalem to the ground. Perhaps, old as I am, it will be given to me to see the day when its walls will fall, when flames will devour its houses, when its inhabitants will be struck down by the sword and salt will be strewn where the Temple once stood. And on that day I shall at last be justified."

Lamia endeavoured to put the conversation back on a more even keel.

"Pontius," he said, "I can easily explain to you both your old resentments and your sinister premonitions. Certainly, what you knew of the character of Jews did them no favours. But I, who was curious about Jerusalem and mingled with the people, was able to discover in these men hidden virtues, which were kept concealed from you. I knew Jews full of gentleness, whose simple habits and faithful hearts reminded me of what our poets have to say about the old man of Ebalia. And your yourself, Pontius, saw beaten to death by the rods of legionaries simple men, who, without even saying their name, died for a cause they thought just. Such men do not deserve our contempt. I talk like this because it is fitting to keep measure and balance in all things. But I'll admit I never felt much sympathy for Jewish men. Jewish women, on the other hand, I liked a lot. I was young then, and Syrian women played havoc with my senses. Their red lips, their damp eyes, and their long gazes shining in the shade, struck me to the marrow of my bones. Made up and painted, and smelling of nard and myrrh, steeped in spices, their flesh is rare and delightful."

Pontius listened to these praises impatiently:

"I wasn't a man to fall into the honey traps set by Jewesses," he said, "and since you lead me to say it, Lamia, I never approved of your lack of self-restraint. If I didn't emphasize enough to you in days gone by that I held you to be very much at fault for having seduced, back in Rome, the wife of a consul, I think it was because you were then paying dearly for that crime. Marriage is a sacred institution for patricians, one that Rome counts on. As for slaves or foreign women, the relations you could strike up with them would count for little were it not that your body gets used to in them a shameful softness. You sacrificed too freely to the goddess of crossroads, I must say, and what I find most to blame in you, Lamia, is that you did not marry legitimately and give children to Rome as every good citizen should do."

But the man exiled by Tiberius was no longer listening to the old magistrate. Having emptied his cup of its vinum Falernum, he was smiling at some invisible picture.

After a moment of silence, he continued in a very low voice that gradually grew louder:

"They dance so languorously, the women of Syria. I knew then in Jerusalem a Jewess who, in a hovel, by the light of a small smoky lamp, on a bad carpet, danced raising her arms to clash her cymbals. Her back arched, her head thrown back and as if dragged down by her heavy auburn hair, her eyes drowned in voluptuousness, ardent and languishing, supple, she'd have made Cleopatra herself pale with envy. I loved her barbaric dances, her slightly husky and yet so sweet singing, the smell of her incense, the semi-sleeping state she seemed to live in. I followed her everywhere. I mixed in with the vile crowd of soldiers, boatmen and publicans she was surrounded with. One day she disappeared and I never saw her again. I looked for a long time for her in doubtful alleyways and taverns. She was harder for me to do without than Greek wine. A few months after I had lost track of her, I learned, quite by chance, that she had joined a small group of men and women who were followers of a young Galilean miracle worker. He was called Jesus, came from Nazareth, and was crucified, for what crime I don't know. Do you remember that man, Pontius?"

Pontius Pilate frowned, bringing his hand to his forehead like someone who is trying to remember. Then, after a few moments of silence, he murmured:

"Jesus. Jesus. From Nazareth? No. I can't bring him to mind."

End of Project Gutenberg's The Procurator of Judea, by Anatole France