We began climbing stairs, many of them, until we had to step around several life-size marble statues pressed close to each other on a wide landing before we proceeded down a long carpeted hallway whose walls were decorated with multicolored standards, rusting shields, and swords of various lengths and shapes. At the end of the hall, outside an elaborately carved wooden door, a helmeted guard stiffly snapped his javelin forward to what I assumed was the salute position. Cornelius knocked four times, and at an unintelligible bellow from inside he pushed down on the latch and waved us into the presence of Pontius Pilate, fifth procurator of Judaea, Samaria, and Idumaea.

Pilate was a man of medium size with white hair clipped short. His features were sharp, especially his ears, and there was a deep cleft in his chin. He was beardless, like all Romans of status, and his swarthy complexion suggested that perhaps those writers were correct who had deduced, through the centuries, that Pilate’s roots had been in Spain. I was pleased to see that he considered our meeting an informal one, for he was wearing none of the trappings of his office. Covering his body was a light tunic, similar to mine, and his feet were barely encased in brief leather sandals. He poured white wine for us, from a flask at his elbow, and replenished his own goblet while he and Joseph discussed politics and conditions in the city as if I were not even present.

From all I had been able to research on the man, Pilate was uneducated, uncouth, cold, and surly. Josephus, the first-century historian, had described him as haughty, obstinate, coarse, and tactless, and the Jewish prince Agrippa, in a letter to the Emperor Gaius, had called him inflexible, stubborn, and relentless. As I watched, it would have been difficult for me to attach any of those adjectives to this relaxed and polite individual who was listening to Joseph’s opinions with attention and respect. Whenever he spoke he would wave his hands to emphasize a point, and I couldn’t help noticing the heavy gold ring on his right middle finger. It must be, I assumed, that treasure so highly prized throughout the Roman empire, the ring signifying that Pilate was a “friend of Caesar’s,” an honor granted to only a special few of high status and carrying with it many prerogatives and privileges. Shakespeare was correct when he wrote that heaven hides the book of fate from all creatures. Who would have dared to predict that of all the great Romans who ever lived, this man, never more than a procurator in a tiny province that Cicero had called “a hole in the corner” of a vast empire, would one day be better remembered than any of his countrymen? And how many millions of children throughout the centuries had learned to despise his name by reciting those lines from a prayer: “suffered under Pontius Pilate”?