PILATE, priat, Pontius (PoNnus Pu.A Tim), the Roman governor (procurator) of Judaea, Samaria and Idumea at the time of Christ's crucifixion: he held that station from the year 26 till he was deprived of office in 36: the capital of the district ruled by him was Caesarea, in. earlier times known as Turris Stra tonis. Little or nothing is known regarding his history previous to his appointment as procura tor. He was a man specially unfitted by tem perament for the station to which he was as signed, in view of the keen animosities existing for ages between the Jews, the Samaritans and the ancient inhabitants of Philistia, and the abhorrence of the Jews for their Gentile rulers. Pilate flaunted in the face of the people of the Holy City the standards of the Roman armies with the image of Tiberius and the eagles of the legions, both of which were always saluted with religious veneration as gods; he rifled the sacred treasury (corban) of the temple to pay the cost of an aqueduct; he slaughtered a com pany of Galileans while they were engaged in an act of sacrifice; he set his troops upon a peaceable assemblage of Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, the holy place of that nation; it was this act, not his surrendering Jesus into the hands of his enemies in violation of Roman justice and simple humanity, that led to his being deprived of office. Eusebius adds that he
was banished to Vienna (Vienne) in Gaul and that he died by suicide. But legend does not treat his story so prosaically; one legend makes him die at Rome where his body, having been thrown into the Tiber, caused violent tempests and inundations; but the patrons of the Vienne tradition make Vienne and the river Rhone the theatre of these prodigies. Strangely, Ter tullian holds Pilate to have been at heart a Christian (pro sua conscientia christianus); the Copts reckon him among the martyrs, and he has a nlace in the Abyssinian Church calendar. Pilate's wife, traditionally named Procla, or Claudia Procula, is venerated in the Greek Church as a saint; her day in the Greek Church calendar is 27 October. Consult the apocryphal 'Acts of Pilate' • Rosadi, G., 'The Trial of Jesus> (London 1905).