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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ness " as might have originally led it to religion. 

 Their whole history and literature indicate, on 

 the contrary, that it was the intense sense of the 

 Divine which moulded the nation originally, and 

 which afterward led to a wide-spread though im- 

 perfect cultivation of the ars boni et cequi. Even 

 that Rabbinic cultivation, as we have seen, was 

 marred by continual exaggerations and artifices 

 which reveal the original inaptitude of the race 

 for high judicial excellence. Accordingly, down 

 to the time with which we are dealing, it remained 

 a small, isolated Asiatic tribe, filled through and 

 through with national and religious prejudices. 

 It is not to such that men look for a model of the 

 administration of equal laws. But there have 

 been races in the world who reflected, as there 

 are races who do reflect, in an eminent degree, 

 that deep sense of righteousness which lies at the 

 root of all law. And of all such races, ancient 

 and modern, the greatest was that which at this 

 time ruled over Palestine and over the world. 

 When the sceptre departed from Judah, it passed 

 into the strong, smiting hands of Rome ; and al- 

 ready all the nations had begun to exchange their 

 terror of its warlike might for that admiration 

 of its administrative wisdom which has grown 

 upon the world ever since. And already, too, 

 that admiration was mingled with confidence and 

 trust. Those Eastern races felt, what we two 

 thousand years after can historically trace, that 

 the better part of the unequnled authority of the 

 Roman law was due to the stern, hard virtues of 

 the early race and early republic. Its influence 

 was dimly recognized then, and it is clearly trace- 

 able now, as having sprung from the instinct of 

 righteousness which guided prater and proconsul 

 in every subject land, long before Ulpian or Gaius 

 had written out that instinct into immortal law. 



Pontius Pilate was at this time the represent- 

 ative of Rome in Judea ; the governor, as he is 

 called in the Gospels. But it will be found in- 

 structive to note more carefully what his exact 

 position was. lie was the procurator Ccesaris ; 

 the procurator, deputy, or attorney, of Tiberius in 

 that province. And he was no procurator fisca- 

 lis, 1 with functions equivalent to those of quaes- 

 tor. Pilate's was no such subordinate or finan- 

 cial office. He was a procurator cum potentate ; 

 a governor with civil, criminal, and military ju- 

 risdiction ; subordinated no doubt in rank to the 

 adjacent Governor of Syria, but directly respon- 

 sible to his great master at Rome. And what 



1 The name is still used in Scotland, having had there \ 

 originally its old sense of " the deputy of a provincial 

 judge appointed by him to look after money-matters." I 



was the relation of the emperor himself to the 

 inhabitants of Judea and to the world? The 

 answer is important. The emperor was neither 

 more nor less than the representative of Rome. 

 In modern times men associate the imperial title 

 with absolutism and a more than royal power. 

 To Romans, even in the days of Tiberius, the 

 name of a king was intolerable, and absolutism, 

 except under republican forms, distasteful. Ac- 

 cordingly, when Augustus became the undisputed 

 chief of the republic, and determined so to con- 

 tinue, he remained nominally a mere private 

 nobleman or citizen. The saviour of society did 

 not dare to attack the constitution of the state. 

 He effected his object in another way. He 

 gathered into his own hands the whole powers 

 and functions, and accumulated upon his own 

 head the whole honors and privileges, which the 

 state had for centuries distributed among its 

 gi*eat magistrates and representatives. He be- 

 came perpetual Princeps Senatus, or leader of 

 the legislative house. He became perpetual Pon- 

 tifex Maximus, or chief of the national religion. 

 He became perpetual tribune, or guardian of the 

 people, with his person thereby made sacred and 

 inviolable. He became perpetual consul, or su- 

 preme magistrate over the whole Roman world, 

 with the control of its revenues, the disposal of 

 its armies, and the execution of its laws. And, 

 lastly, he became perpetual imperator, or military 

 chief, to whom every legionary throughout the 

 world took the sacramentum, and whose sword 

 swept the globe from Indus and Gibraltar to the 

 pole. And yet in all he was a simple citizen — a 

 mere magistrate of the republic. Only, in this 

 one man was now visibly accumulated and con- 

 centrated all that for centuries had broadened 

 and expanded under the magnificent abstraction 

 of Rome. Tiberius, therefore, the first inheritor 

 of this constitution of Caesar Augustus, was in 

 the strictest sense the representative of that 

 great city that ruled over the kings of the earth. 

 And the Roman knight who now governed in 

 Judea was his representative in his public capa- 

 city. For Augustus, as is well known, had divided 

 the provinces into two classes. To the more 

 peaceful and central, he allowed the Senate to 

 send proconsuls, while even over these he re- 

 served his own consular and military power. 

 But some provinces, like Judea, he retained in 

 his own hands as their proconsul or governor. 

 Strictly and constitutionally, the governor of the 

 Jewish nation, at the time of which we write, 

 was not Pilate at Csesarea or Vitellius at Antioch, 

 but Tiberius at Rome. He was the Proconsul or 



