Jesus of Nazareth stands before Pontius Pilatus. “What charges are you bringing against this man?” Pilatus asks of the Pharisees who hold Jesus for trial. “If he were not a criminal, we would not have brought him before you,” the Pharisees explain to the Roman Prefect.

Pilatus sighs, but nobody, not even his servants, can hear it over the stormy noise of chatter, whispers, and rumours unfolding all over Jerusalem. “Take him yourselves! Judge him according to your own law,” Pilatus commands, dismissively. The head of Pharisees looks at his colleagues. They nod back at him. “We are not allowed to put anyone to death. Such is your law.”

Reluctantly, with limitless annoyance, fuming, Pilatus takes custody of Jesus. He brings Jesus to the preatorium. Once the guards and Pharisees disperse, Pilatus wastes no time.
“Let’s get this over with. Are you the King of the Jews?” he asks Jesus.
“Is this your own thought, or have others told you this about me?”

This was not the first time Pilates has seen phony prophets among the people of Judea, nor ones who were ready to rebuke powerful figures of authority like the Roman Prefect. “Am I a Jew? Your own people – your own priests – handed you over to me! What do you have to say for yourself?”
“My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would be fighting even now, but as it is, my Kingdom is not of this realm.”
Pilatus smirks. “So… you are a king?”
“So you say. For this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the Truth. Everyone who is of the Truth listens to my voice.”
“Truth? What is the truth?”

Jesus no longer responds. Pilatus chews his lips, giving the physically battered Jesus a quick glance, before turning to one of his servants. “Take him outside. We’re done here”

Now outside with Jesus and the Pharisees, Pilatus speaks to the restless crowd that has gathered. “I find no guilt in this man, but you have a custom that I should release one man for you at Passover! So! Shall I release for you Barabbas, or shall I release for you the King of the Jews!?” Content with his expert diplomatic tact and delivery, he awaits a positive reception of the crowd that will settle the petty dispute quickly.

“Not this man! Barabbas! Release Barabbas!” The crowd quickly whips itself up into a frenzy, demanding that Barabbas be the one to be freed. Pilatus turns to one of his aides. “Is my Aramaic correct? They want to free Barabbas?” Uneasily, the aide responds. “Yes, my Prefect, they… they wish for Jesus of Nazareth to be crucified.” Pilatus has to strain his hearing over the sound of bloody murder now unfolding before him, visibly shocked by this revelation, but collects himself, standing up to speak to the public once more.

“What, then, shall I do with your ‘King of the Jews?’” he shouts with the best voice his orator skills can muster. “Crucify him! Kill him!” the crowd responds, with seemingly zero hesitation. Pilatus turns to his aide, confused. “I do not know, my Prefect. I do not know,” the aide responds, resigned.

“Why!? What evil has this man done!?” Pilatus asks the public, his confusion masked, but not perfectly. “He has blasphemed against Yahweh!” one man yells from the crowd. “He has insulted our priesthood! Nail him!” a woman shouts. Pilatus spots Pharisees swimming among the increasingly chaotic and angrier crowd, like a school of fish, speaking with their laity about things Pilatus will never hear, but he can hazard a fair guess as to what those things are. Before he could further dwell on it, however, a Centurion rushes onto the podium, winded.

“Yes, Longinos?” Pilatus asks, confused by his hurry. “Prefect, there are people fighting. My men are keeping the order, but… if the situation doesn’t get resolved soon, I think we got a riot on our hands.” The Centurion takes a deep breath. “Ah, shit…” he sighs, taking a quick glance at Jesus. “Is this because of him? They want to kill him?”

“Yes… yes, indeed, they want him killed. How do you know?”
“People won’t shut up about it. It’s strange. On Monday, they were practically in heaven. They would not shut up about him. Now, they won’t shut up– about killing him.”
“Yes! Exactly! This is so strange. What is wrong with Jews? There is nothing to kill him for.”
“I do not know, Pilatus, but if you don’t get this situation under control, we’ll have to call in other Centurions. Maybe even the Legion.”

They both look at the gathered crowd, not any less bloodthirsty than a minute earlier. Pilatus looks at Jesus. Pilatus does not want to kill Jesus, as killing an innocent man would weigh heavy on his conscience; something he would not live down as a dignified Prefect of Judea. After much contemplation and much hesitation, he turns to the Centurion. “I think… I think I know what to do,” Pilatus says, uneasily. Longinos is visibly taken aback by this uncharacteristic wavering, something which makes Pilatus speak up more firmly. “Scourge him. Show those Jews the pain.”

Longinos nods. “At once. Modestos! With me,” the Centurion says to his Legionnaire as he quickly marches. “And you, Jesus of Nazareth, come with us. The Roman Senate and People hold you accountable for instigating riots and disorderly conduct.” Jesus is taken by the two men back to the preatorium, where the Roman Legion applies a severe flogging that puts Jesus of Nazareth at the death’s door. The Romans Legionnaires mock him for the audacity to stand up to Roman authority, spitting on him and whipping him mercilessly.

Once returned, Pilatus can only see a blood-coloured silhouette in the shape of a person. Pilate had seen men flogged before, but the thoroughness of the legionnaires was a grim art form. The prisoner was no longer a silhouette; he was a ruin of a man, held up by two guards. The flagrum had flayed the skin from his back into a latticework of crimson ribbons, and blood dripped from his torn scalp where they had mockingly pressed a crown of thorns into his flesh. He swayed on his feet, his head bowed, each breath a shallow, rattling effort.

“Is he still alive?” Pilatus asks his Centurion, his voice a low monotone, betraying none of the revulsion he felt. This was not about justice anymore. It was about management. “Yes. Do you want us to bring him forth?”

“Bring him forth.” Pilate’s gaze hardened. He saw not a man, but a solution. This broken, bleeding thing was the answer to the crowd’s fury. What king looked like this? What threat to Rome could be found in this shattered vessel of a body? He had seen riots quelled with less. Let them see their “king.” Let them see what Roman authority does to such ambitions. They wanted a spectacle; he would give them one so pitiable, so utterly devoid of glory, that their bloodlust would curdle into disgust and they would disperse, ashamed. This, he thought with a grim sense of strategic victory, would be the end of it.

He stepped forward, his voice ringing with a confidence he felt he had just earned. “This should satisfy the crowd. Behold! The man!”

Upon spotting Jesus once more, the call for bloody murder and torture of Jesus seem to only intensify, rather than calm. Pilatus can now barely hear himself think over the relentless shrieking and guttural anger. He looks over to Longinos, aghast. Longinos offers no answer. Pilatus turns back to the crowd. “Enough! Take him yourselves and crucify him! I have found no guilt deserving of death!”

A member of the crowd close to him offers some much-needed insight. “No! He must die! By our law, he is guilty, because he made himself out to be the Son of God!” Pilatus looks at the man, the man’s face but a blur. The stunning conclusion of what he said drowned out all the background noise. The words “Son of God” did not land in his mind as a Jewish religious grievance. They struck a deeper, colder, Roman chord. The noise of the rioting crowd seemed to recede, becoming a distant, hollow roar like the sea against a cliff.

Divi filius. The title belonged to Caesar, a claim to divinity that secured an empire. To make such a claim in Judea was an act of rebellion, simple and plain. It was treason. But Jerusalem’s thirst for blood, and the prisoner’s unnerving calm, suggested something more. Pilate’s mind, trained in law and order, raced past the political implications and into the shadowed realm of faith and superstition. He thought of Hercules, son of Jupiter, whose earth-shaking power was a matter of history, not myth. He thought of Romulus, suckled by a wolf and descended from Mars, whose divine blood founded Rome itself.

These were not tales for children; they were the bedrock of the world. The gods walked among men. They sired heroes and monsters. And they did not suffer mortals who slighted them. The prisoner’s claim was not merely blasphemy against the local deity, Yahweh. It was a potential claim to a power that could level legions and topple cities. A power that you did not crucify on a whim. In that sudden, profound silence in his own mind, he remembered a lesson learned long ago, on a sun-drenched street in Rome.

“Daddy, daddy!” the adolescent Pilatus says to his father. His father was just punched by a man on the streets of Rome, in a dispute over who bumped into the other on purpose. “Man! I do not know you! I did not bump into you on purpose,” Pilatus’ father says to the man. “Yeah, well… you better watch yourself next time,” the man mocked, spitting on the ground before stomping away. The man did not inflict any serious damage, other than a noticeable bruise on the chin.

“Daddy, why didn’t you hit him back? You’re, like, two times as big as him! Three times, even…” Pilatus asks, exasperated. His father chuckles and pats him on the head, giving him a smile bright as the day they were on. “No, son. If I were to do that with everyone who annoys me, I’d be punching people all day.”
“But he didn’t annoy you. He punched you!”
Pilatus’ father chuckles once more. He takes a deep breath. “You see, son… there is something you need to know about the gods above. Although they are mighty and shake the planet, they still like us. Not always, but they still like us. So much so, they can sometimes even come down to us.”
Pilatus looks confused. “Come down to us?”
“Yes. As people.”
“Really? Why?”
“In order to test us, Pontius. To see if we are still good, if our sacrifices are good. Without knowing it, you could cross paths with someone who looks like a regular person, but is, in fact, the manifestation of Zeus himself. Or one of his sons, like Hades.”
“Even Atlas?”
“Even Atlas. That is why, my son, I do not get upset with people. They have problems just like I do, but, most importantly, the one time I do lose my temper and do something I am not supposed to do, I could offend one of the very gods themselves. What is a moment of revenge if the risk is potentially eternal damnation? Do you understand, son?”

Pilatus nods. He turns around and sees Jesus looking straight at him over the blood dripping over his eyes. “Take him aside. I want to talk to him,” Pilatus commands.

Pilatus and Jesus stand face to face, in a quieter corner of the preatorium. “Where? Where are you from!?” Pilatus asks Jesus as directly as he can. Jesus, however, does not reply. “Why won’t you tell me? Don’t you know that I have the authority to release you? To excuse you? To crucify you!?” At this point, the desperation is clear, showing vulnerability that he would not show before any of his subordinates or the Centurions.

“You,” Jesus begins meekly, “Would have no power over me, unless it were granted to you from above. For this reason, the one who delivered me unto you has the greater sin.” As a Roman official, Pilatus was familiar with the concept of devotio: the fanatical willingness to do anything for the Emperor and the Senate, including dying for it. This was not it. This was something far more terrifying, perhaps even greater than Rome itself, something that left Pilatus utterly speechless. Pilatus stands with Jesus for a moment. They look at each other, but neither of them say anything. Eventually, Pilatus leaves without a word, rushing out to the podium with Jesus in his custody.

It is then that Pilatus tells Longinos, nearly grabbing him by the cuff out of fear and frustration, “Release this man immediately.” Longinos is clearly shocked by this. “But, Prefect, if we–” Pilatus interrupts. “I don’t care if there’s going to be a riot. Call in the Legion if need be! This man is innocent.”

“If you release this man,” the head of Pharisees chimes in, having overheard what Pilatus just tried to discreetly tell the Centurion. He takes slow and confident steps towards Pilatus. “You are no friend of Caesar! Anyone who makes himself out to be a king… opposes Caesar!”

The words struck Pilatus like a physical blow, colder and sharper than any whip. The roar of the Jerusalem crowd faded, replaced by the chilling silence of the Senate floor in Rome. He saw it again, as clearly as if it were yesterday. He saw Tiberius, his face a mask of bored indifference, watching as a fellow senator – a man whose only crime was a poorly chosen word in debate – was seized by the Praetorian Guard. The senator’s eyes, wide with the sudden, complete understanding that his life was over, had found Pilatus’ in the crowd of onlookers. The charge, whispered later in the corridors, was maiestas. Treason.

Pilate swallowed, the dry click in his throat drowned out by the blood pounding in his ears. It was no choice at all.

He looked over to Jesus, a final, silent appeal. Jesus turns towards the crowd.