Pilate defends a young Jewish girl who's about to be raped

I am also being unfair to Pilatus. He did many noble things. I so vividly recall an incident that has remained fixed in my memory like no other. Pilatus and I were enjoying a weekend stroll in Jerusalem during the height of the Jewish holidays. As we rounded a corner on what was a festive occasion, with crowds filling the streets and joy spilling out from every face, we both heard a horrible scream from a darkened pathway near the edge of town. It continued, sometimes loud, sometimes whimpering. Sometimes the screams were drowned out by a raucous laughter, the coarse laughter of muscle-strong men.

We entered an alley filled with Roman soldiers obviously enjoying some scene. They laughed, applauded, giggled and seemed to stamp their feet. There before our eyes was a Roman soldier, half clad in his iron and bronze, half stripped and in the act of raping a screaming girl. She was a poorly clad, plain-faced Jewess of thirteen years of age I later discovered.

The soldier’s back was to us and I supposed he thought we were just two more Roman onlookers thrilling and laughing at the rape of a Jewish peasant.

“ Roman soldiers of his Emperor Tiberius,” screamed a raging, eye-strained and red-faced Pilatus, tearing through a crowd of them. He pushed and shoved and screamed his way forward.

“ Strip this scorpion of his clothes and stand him before the Prefect of Judea.”

They obeyed, and in a flash the Roman soldier was bared before all and the soldiers began to laugh, somehow thinking Pilatus was playing games. I knew better; oh how I knew better! I knew Pilatus! The instant his jaw muscles clenched and his hand descended to the sheathed sword I knew it was no party. I prepared my mind and soul for war.

He gazed but a moment at the soldier, drew his weapon, locked his callused hands on the handle. Tightening his grip so that his fingers turned white, he swung the sword to the sky and, with one downward swoop that sent a shivering metallic sound through the air, he severed the male pride at its root. The bleeding organ, convulsed for a second and then limp, fell to the ground. Pilatus gathered juice from his nose and throat, spat upon the organ and kicked it against a nearby tree. I can still see the blood and juices from that sexual stump splashed upon the tree stump

Blood and urine gushed forth from a gaping wound in the soldier’s mid-section.

“ Now, scorpion of Hades, piss like the woman you raped pisses, all of your life left on this earth. Wet your pants in battle; feel all of your days the humiliation of this child.”

He turned to the thirty soldiers, hands still clasping his sword and pointing, deliberatively, at each of them. His gaze forced each heavily armed soldier to lower his gaze until the entire troop was eyes firm on the ground. Pilatus said not a word to them. The message was clear. Fool with Rome and you fool with a distant power. Fool with Pilatus and all the Olympian gods will not protect you, your organ of pleasure or your life. In that moment I knew he proudly represented the Senate and the Roman People—SPQR.

Slowly, silently, the quivering soldiers disassembled and went their separate ways. Pilatus re-entered the darkened alley where he heard the peasant girl still whimpering. He slowly and solemnly raised his bloodstained sword to the sky, turned its still dripping blade flat side down, lowered it gently to her head and said, “Rise, daughter, and seek the solace and strength of your father’s arms and the love and tenderness of your mother’s heart.” She understood his gestures but none of his words. She rose, offered us both a twinkle in her eyes, and disappeared from our lives forever, or so I thought.

Pilatus wiped his reddened sword against a nearby bush and returned the weapon to its home by his side, saying not a word. He took my hand, clasped it hard, and gestured that we should walk. It was not time for me to utter a word.

Soon he spoke again of the beautiful day and the joyous crowds. I dared not to tread on what I had seen or what it meant.

I tried so hard to understand the contradictions in his mind and heart. His actions never ceased to astonish me. He did not see the rape as something against a Jewess girl or a Samarian woman or even a Roman matron. These racial thoughts were not a part of his system of ethics. He simply saw injustice, here and now, one on one. Race, class, position, power did not enter his soul when such tragedies of life arose.

His strength was physical confrontation. No one could successfully grapple with him face to face: not an unarmed citizen, not a legion of fully armed Roman soldiers. Power and combat and the pride of victory were his strength. His weakness was political and social confrontation. There he failed; he did not have the personal security to risk an altercation of the mind.

If I were to imagine a rape trial with Pilatus as judge and a Roman soldier as accused, with Roman citizens and Jewish petitioners present, Pilatus would find a weak way out by somehow turning it over to some other authority. He feared political scenes. They did not permit him to draw his sword, draw blood and saunter away. He was a soldier to the depths of his marrow, not a judge and surely not an adept politician.

I have that rape scene embedded in my memory these many years. The strength and courage of this man and his sense of ethics and the duty that flowed from those ethics contrasted so sharply with his inability to stand firm in similar ethical but political or social arenas.

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