19. Continuing to Offend the Jewish Population
Philo recounts that Pilate set up golden shields in Herod’s palace in Jerusalem, inscribed with a dedication to Emperor Tiberius. Unlike the earlier standards, the shields bore no images, but they still offended Jewish religious sentiment. When local leaders appealed to Tiberius, the emperor ordered the shields removed to pacify the population. The above incidents illustrate Pilate’s tendency to assert Roman authority in ways that clashed with local religious values.
However, they also show his willingness to back down when confronted by imperial intervention, or when backing down was politically pragmatic. That suggests a complex mixture of arrogance, political miscalculation that sometimes got him into trouble, balanced by a survival instinct to get out of the problems he had created.
