Ann Wroe

Edwardian commentators in their boned collars also liked to imagine him in love (“at least as a man of his nature could love”) because it softened the military and legal rigors a little, and possibly also because it confirmed the governor’s moral weakness.

The point of the Roman presence in Judaea was to secure tax revenues, keep the peace and establish trade with Rome; it was not to colonize or Romanize it. Most Romans knew a lost cause when they saw one. Nor was their job to act like an occupying army. Pilate’s troops were more of a police force, responsible for guarding important buildings, protecting the governor, controlling sheep in the streets and, when necessary, punishing malefactors

Good shows, as much as brilliant campaigns, made a man’s political reputation; some men imagined God himself as an aedile, a master of ceremonies, stringing the sky with lights and marshaling the shooting stars.

The governor would have wanted to know what the hell Zaccheus was doing; there can be few things more unsettling than a tax collector finding God.