page_title: Pontius Pilate
section_title: Removal and later life
hierarchical_section_title: Pontius Pilate / Life / Removal and later life
caption_attribution_description: A remorseful Pilate prepares to kill himself. Engraving by G. Mochetti after B. Pinelli. Iconographic Collections Keywords: Pontius Pilate; Bartolomeo Pinelli; G. Mochetti
context_page_description: Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from 26/27 to 36/37 CE. He is best known today for being the official who presided over the trial of Jesus and ordered his crucifixion. Pilate's importance in modern Christianity is underscored by his prominent place in both the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. Due to the Gospels' portrayal of Pilate as reluctant to execute Jesus, the Ethiopian Church believes that Pilate became a Christian and venerates him as a martyr and saint, a belief historically shared by the Coptic Church.
  Although Pilate is the best-attested governor of Judaea, few sources on his rule have survived. He appears to have belonged to the well-attested Pontii family of Samnite origin, but nothing is known for certain about his life before he became governor of Judaea, nor of the circumstances that led to his appointment to the governorship. A single inscription from Pilate's governorship has survived, the so-called Pilate stone, as have coins that he minted.
context_section_description: According to Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews (18.4.1-2), Pilate's removal as governor occurred after Pilate slaughtered a group of armed Samaritans at a village called Tirathana near Mount Gerizim, where they hoped to find artifacts that had been buried there by Moses. Alexander Demandt suggests that the leader of this movement may have been Dositheos, a messiah-like figure among the Samaritans who was known to have been active around this time. The Samaritans, claiming not to have been armed, complained to Lucius Vitellius the Elder, the governor of Syria (term 35-39), who had Pilate recalled to Rome to be judged by Tiberius. Tiberius however, had died before his arrival. This dates the end of Pilate's governorship to 36/37 CE. Tiberius died in Misenum on 16 March AD 37, in his seventy-eighth year (Tacitus, Annals VI.50, VI.51).
  Following Tiberius's death, Pilate's hearing would have been handled by the new emperor Gaius Caligula: it is unclear whether any hearing took place, as new emperors often dismissed outstanding legal matters from previous reigns. The only sure outcome of Pilate's return to Rome is that he was not reinstated as governor of Judaea, either because the hearing went badly, or because Pilate did not wish to return. J. P. Lémonon argues that the fact that Pilate was not reinstated by Caligula does not mean that his trial went badly, but may simply have been because after ten years in the position it was time for him to take a new posting. Joan Taylor, on the other hand, argues that Pilate seems to have ended his career in disgrace, using his unflattering portrayal in Philo, written only a few years after his dismissal, as proof.
  The church historian Eusebius (Church History 2.7.1), writing in the early fourth century, claims that "tradition relates that" Pilate committed suicide after he was recalled to Rome due to the disgrace he was in. Eusebius dates this to 39 CE. Paul Maier notes that no other surviving records corroborate Pilate's suicide, which is meant to document God's wrath for Pilate's role in the crucifixion, and that Eusebius explicitly states that "tradition" is his source, "indicating that he had trouble documenting Pilate's presumed suicide". Daniel Schwartz, however, argues that Eusebius's claims "should not lightly be dismissed." More information on the potential fate of Pontius Pilate can be gleaned from other sources. The second-century pagan philosopher Celsus polemically asked why, if Jesus was God, God had not punished Pilate, indicating that he did not believe that Pilate shamefully committed suicide. Responding to Celsus, the Christian apologist Origen, writing c. 248 CE, argued that nothing bad happened to Pilate, because the Jews and not Pilate were responsible for Jesus' death; he therefore also assumed that Pilate did not die a shameful death. Pilate's supposed suicide is also left unmentioned in Josephus, Philo, or Tacitus. Maier argues that "[i]n all probability, then, the fate of Pontius Pilate lay clearly in the direction of a retired government official, a pensioned Roman ex-magistrate, than in anything more disastrous." Taylor notes that Philo discusses Pilate as though he were already dead in the Embassy to Gaius, although he is writing only a few years after Pilate's tenure as governor.
caption: A remorseful Pilate prepares to kill himself. Engraving by G. Mochetti after B. Pinelli, early 19th century.
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