His most likely place of birth, however, was Rome. His ancestors were probably Samnites, a warlike tribe who inhabited the craggy hills south of the city. His second name, Pontius, suggested he was a descendant of the Pontii, a clan that produced several important Roman military figures. His cognomen, Pilatus, meant “skilled with a javelin.” It was possible Pontius Pilate, through his military exploits, earned the name himself. The more plausible explanation is that he was the son of a knight and a member of the equestrian order, the second tier of Roman nobility, falling just beneath the senatorial class.

If so, he would have enjoyed a comfortable Roman upbringing. The family home would have had an atrium, a colonnaded garden, running water, and a private bath. A second dwelling, a villa, would have overlooked the sea. He would have traveled the streets of Rome not on foot but held aloft in a litter by slaves. Unlike most children at the dawn of the first millennium, he would have never known hunger. He would have wanted for nothing.

His education would have been rigorous—several hours of instruction each day in reading, writing, mathematics, and, when he was older, the finer points of critical thinking and debate, skills that would serve him well later in life. He would have honed his physique with regular weight lifting and then recovered from his efforts with a trip to the baths. For entertainment he would have reveled in the blood-soaked spectacles of the games. It was unlikely he ever saw the Flavian Amphitheatre, the great circular colosseum built in the low valley between the Caelian, Esquiline, and Palatine hills. The project was funded with spoils from the Temple in Jerusalem, which he knew intimately. He would not witness its destruction in 70 C.E., though surely he must have known its days were numbered.

The new and restive province of Judea was some fourteen hundred miles from Rome, a journey of three weeks or more by sea. Pontius Pilate, after serving several years as a junior officer in the Roman army, arrived there in 26 C.E. It was not a coveted post; Syria to the north and Egypt to the southeast were far more important. But what Judea lacked in stature it more than made up for in potential trouble. Its native population considered themselves chosen by their God and superior to their pagan, polytheist occupiers. Jerusalem, their holy city, was the only place in the Empire where local inhabitants did not have to prostrate themselves before an image of the emperor. Pilate, if he was to succeed, would have to handle them with care.

He had no doubt seen these people in Rome. They were the bearded, circumcised inhabitants of Regio XIV, a crowded quarter on the west side of the Tiber that would one day become known as Trastevere. There were perhaps four and a half million of them spread throughout the Empire. They had thrived under Roman rule, taking advantage of the freedom of commerce and movement the Empire afforded them. Everywhere they settled they were wealthy and much admired as a God-fearing people who loved their children, respected human life, and looked after the poor, the sick, the widowed, and the orphaned. Julius Caesar spoke highly of them and granted them important rights of association, which allowed them to worship their God instead of Rome’s.

But those who lived in the ancestral homeland of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee were a less cosmopolitan lot. Violently anti-Roman, they were riven with sects, perhaps as many as twenty-four, including the puritanical Essenes, who did not recognize the authority of the Temple. A massive complex atop Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, it was controlled by Sadducee aristocrats who profited through their association with the occupation and worked closely with the Roman prefect to assure stability.

Pilate was only the fifth to serve in the post. His headquarters were in Caesarea, a Roman enclave of gleaming white marble on the Mediterranean coast. There was a curving promenade by the sea where he could stroll when the weather was fine, and Roman temples where he made sacrifices to his gods, not theirs. Pilate, if he were so inclined, might well have imagined he had never left home.

It was not his task to remake the inhabitants of the province—they would one day become known as Jews—in Rome’s image. Pilate was a collector of taxes, a facilitator of trade, and a writer of endless reports to Emperor Tiberius, which he sealed with wax and marked with the signet ring he wore on the last finger of his left hand. Rome, by and large, did not involve itself in every facet of culture and society in the lands it occupied. Its laws hibernated during periods of tranquillity and awoke only when there was a threat to order.

Troublemakers typically received a warning. And if they foolishly persisted, they were dealt with swiftly and brutally. Pilate’s immediate predecessor, Valerius Gratus, once dispatched two hundred Jews simultaneously with Rome’s preferred method of execution: death on the cross. After a revolt in 4 B.C.E., two thousand were crucified outside Jerusalem. So powerful was their faith in their one God, they went to the cross without fear.

As prefect, Pilate was Judea’s chief magistrate, its judge and jury. Even so, the Jews handled much of the province’s civil administration and law enforcement through the Sanhedrin, the rabbinical tribunal that convened daily—except for religious festivals and the Sabbath—in the Hall of Hewn Stones on the north side of the Temple complex. Pilate was under orders from Emperor Tiberius to grant the Jews wide latitude in running their own affairs, especially when it came to matters of their religion. He was to remain in the background whenever possible, the hidden hand, Rome’s invisible man.

But Pilate, quick-tempered and vindictive, soon developed a reputation for savagery, theft, endless executions, and needless provocations. There was, for example, his decision to affix military standards bearing the emperor’s likeness to the walls of the Antonia Fortress, which overlooked the Temple itself. Predictably, the Jews reacted with fury. Several thousand surrounded Pilate’s palace in Caesarea, where a weeklong standoff ensued. When the Jews made it clear that they were prepared to die if their demands were not met, Pilate relented and the standards were removed.

And then there was Pilate’s admittedly impressive aqueduct, which he financed, at least in part, with sacred money, corban, stolen from the Temple treasury. Once again he was confronted by a large crowd, this time at the Great Pavement, the elevated platform outside Herod’s Citadel, which served as Pilate’s Jerusalem headquarters. Sprawled impassively atop his curule chair, Pilate silently endured their abuse for a time before ordering his soldiers to unsheathe their swords. Some of the unarmed Jews were hacked to pieces. Others were trampled in the melee.

Lastly, there were the gold-plated shields dedicated to Tiberius that he hung in his Jerusalem apartments. The Jews demanded the shields be removed. And when Pilate refused, they dispatched a letter of protest to none other than the emperor himself. It reached Tiberius while he was on holiday in Capri, or so claimed the philosopher Philo. Seething with rage over his prefect’s needless blunder, Tiberius ordered Pilate to remove the shields without delay.

He went to Jerusalem as seldom as possible, usually to oversee security during Jewish festivals. Passover, the celebration of the Jews’ deliverance from bondage in Egypt, was rife with both religious and political implications. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from across the Empire—in some cases, entire villages—descended on the city. The streets were jammed with pilgrims and perhaps a quarter-million bleating sheep awaiting ritual slaughter. Lurking in the shadows were the Sicarii, cloaked Jewish zealots who killed Roman soldiers with their distinctive daggers and then disappeared into the crowds.