Pontius Pilate was the Roman Procurator of Palestine during the reign of Tiberius. Though he commanded a Roman legion of 4500 soldiers, his was not a plush assignment. Saddled with governing one of the frontier provinces of the Roman Empire he spent most of his time in Caesarea Maritime where the weather was reasonably decent and where he was able to have minimal contact with the stubbornly unruly inhabitants of the region under his control. Only on high holy days did Pilate trouble himself to go into Jerusalem so as to be present should any sort of problem arise. Still, he was the face of the Roman Empire in that part of the world, and as such, he literally had the power of life or death over the people under his control. Yet, for all the trappings that went with his position, it is quite possible that Pontius Pilate would have lived and died utterly forgotten by history had it not been for one fateful day when he crossed paths with a Galilean Jew named Jesus of Nazareth.
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