The Daily Stoic - Ann Wroe On The Real Story Of Pontius Pilate, And His Connection To Stoicism
Episode Date: August 2, 2023Ryan speaks with Ann Wroe about her book Pontius Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man, what she has learned over her long career of writing obituaries, why death is the great equalizer, t...he intrigue and misunderstanding of Pontius Pilate and his life, and more.Ann Wroe is an author and columnist who has been the obituaries editor of The Economist since 2003. She has published several non-fiction books including biographies of Percy Shelley and Perkin Warbeck, and a book on the subject of the mythological figure of Orpheus, which won the London Hellenic Prize. Her biography of Pilate was shortlisted for the 1999 Samuel Johnson Prize. Ann became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired
by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength
and insight here in everyday life.
And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy,
well-known and obscure, fascinating, and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits
that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives.
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Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.
Sometimes I read a book and it just, I'm just'm just like, wow, where did this come from? This is just an amazing work of art. It's just masterful in every sense. And I don't
know why I ended up reading this biography of Pontius Pilate, but man, it was so good.
I could only read a couple pages at a time. And I need like stop and just think. I just needed to take a minute and think
about that's how good this book was and man I seriously I have not read a book this good
in a very long time so I just had to have the author on the podcast and wrote she's an author
and an editor she's been at the economist since 1976 where she was the books editor and then the
US editor. And since 2003, she's been the obituaries editor. She typically does one obituary in each
print issue. She's written hundreds of obituaries, Hunter S. Thompson, Arthur Miller, Prince, Paul Newman,
Osama Bin Laden. But this book she wrote on Pontius Pilate, I am telling you, it is
She wrote on Pontius Pilate, I am telling you, it is unreal good.
Like, well, as I'm saying, one of the best books I have ever read,
we're carrying it now at the painted porch. You've got to get it.
It tragically, it is not nearly as popular as it should be.
We recommended it in a reading list email a couple months ago.
And like, it sold so many copies, the publisher had to reprint more,
but we've got them at the painted porch.
You're going to love this interview. I will apologize.
There was a little bit of like, she was using a mic that sort of came over off the
side of her face.
And I had her fix it once.
I may have made it worse.
I care more about audio quality these days than I did early days in the podcast.
So you might notice that slight problem.
But trust me, this interview is worth listening to. And I was so grateful for Anne to come on the podcast. So you might notice that slight problem, but trust me, this interview is worth listening to,
and I was so grateful for Anne to come on the podcast. We had a great conversation and
Pontius Pilate, who you know from the story of the crucifixion of Christ, might not seem like it
would intersect with the Stoic's much, might not seem like a book like that would talk about
Seneca and Marcus Reales. but the introduction itself mentions Marcus.
So lots of ties to stoicism in this interview as well.
And I think you'll like my conversation with Anne Roe.
Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree's podcast,
Business Wars.
And in our new season, two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott,
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Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
So I have a funny story about your obituaries book, which I loved.
Somebody gave me, somebody gave me this as a gift.
It says, Ryan, out of all the books I've read, this is the only one I've wanted to give to you.
I suggest you keep it in your bathroom. It's a great way to start today.
Of course, that one, that book wasn't entirely me.
I know, I know.
But I did, this is the actual story.
I didn't keep it in my bathroom.
I had it on a low shelf in my office.
And my son, when he was young, he was maybe like two years old.
He walked into my office one day and he started playing
with the books.
And I went in the other room for a second
and I came back and I have this photo of him
which I think about all the time.
But he's sitting down pretending to read this book and the juxtaposition of youth and
life and this book all about death.
It stuck with me and I think about that photo all the time.
It's true but because it is all about life.
In fact, rather than death, isn't it?
I don't think we even mention what people die of most of the time.
It's just about what they've done.
That's a very good point.
Yeah, and obituary is not usually about the circumstances of your unusual or premature
or long-awaited death.
It's all about what you did with the time that you had.
And if you didn't do anything, you're probably not going to appear in the
economist of a Victoria section.
That's true.
But in fact, when I say we never mention the cause of death,
sometimes it's a really good reason to mention it.
There was a crocodile hunter I did once who was eaten by a crocodile.
That sort of thing, you know, it has to be done. There
was a man who used to chase after tornadoes who in the end was killed by a tornado. Sometimes
or people die really prematurely and you want to say why and but it is rare, all the
same. Most people who die are, I mean been there getting increasingly old, actually. More and more,
100-year candidates there, 100-year class.
There is something more,
but whenever I read an obituary,
I do want to, or I hear someone died,
especially if they're young,
there is part of me that wants to know why.
Like I want to gruesome,
interesting, gossipy details for some reason.
Well, I agree with you that if they're young, you would know how and why.
But often if it's a suicide, it's just not known enough.
By the time I write, nobody is quite sure what happened or why they did it or whether
it is an accident.
And that's the trouble.
You can't really write the life if you don't know whether this awful thing was hanging
over them through it or not.
Yeah, there's a lot of euphemisms, right?
It's like, pass-to-way, suddenly, pass-to-way unexpectedly, which either means something random
and accidental happened or something quite deliberate and tragic happened.
Yes, and sometimes you never do know.
You never hear the answer.
So I tend to steer away from those.
You know, they're still under police investigation, often, anyway.
But it's more, as I say, it's the shadow it threw us across the life.
You've got to interpret the life in one way or another
according to how it ended in that case.
What is writing obituaries due to a person?
I don't know if it does anything to me.
I just enjoy them totally.
I mean, I don't, I think of death as just another stage of life.
We carry on in my philosophy.
And a lot of other people's philosophy too.
So to me, it's not a sad thing at all.
It just we finished this stage.
This is what we did in the time we had here.
There's something else coming.
We don't know what, exactly.
But that's the reason that it doesn't depress me at all.
But I must say what I mentioned is a party.
Some people say, what'd you do?
And I say, I write a bit of it.
It's as if I've said, I'm an accountant, you know,
immediately the face goes into the mask and they look for someone else to talk to.
We have that, that's a very stoic idea. I think in Meditations, Mark's really says something
about how everything in life comes from change and death is either the cessation of change
or it is a change into a thing that we do not yet understand.
Exactly. Well, I would say it's the latter. And if it's the cessation, I think it was
its Socrates who said, you know, if it's just a matter of going to sleep forever, that's fine.
But if I get, you know, if I wait and see my whole my friends around me, that's even better,
but I'm happy for right to think that happens. It is interesting. I mean, you write by nature of it being an economist. You write pretty much
only about notable. In some cases, extremely famous people heads of state, heads of large companies,
celebrities, etc. But there is something equalizing about the obituary. I mean, I noticed they're all,
I don't know if there's a single one in this book that's more than four columns or two pages.
Interesting thought that I would tell you, the only ones we've done two that were more than a page.
One of them was David Bowie because the editor was a great fan of David Bowie.
So he had to have more than a page.
And the other one was Muhammad Ali
because the writer was again a huge fan. And then I said enough, death is the great equalizer.
Everybody gets a page whether it's the poop or you know the guy who sells vegetables down the street.
They all deserve a page. And when you say it's celebrities, I really try and keep away from them.
I think you'll find there are
lots scattered through there that are not celebrities at all, that are people that were
largely unknown. And they're the ones actually that I like to do best and read as like to read best.
Isn't there a line from the poet, Juvenile? He says something like, in life, the entire world was not big enough for Alexander,
but in death, a coffin was sufficient. And there's something about the incredible ambition and
success and power that these people had. And in the end, they all fit in the same two pages.
That's right. They do. Is this fitting the same as things for a coffee? It's absolutely right. It's true.
It's true.
But as I say, I do try and keep away from the famous folk.
My heart always sinks when I have to do as somebody famous.
I mean, there has been a real procession of famous people dying in recent weeks.
I mean, they're not huge, huge, huge famous but you know people like Tina Turner,
I guess she is famous, you know, huge famous in a way, but you can't avoid them and then call
back McCarthy, who actually he had to be done in another place, but there was a sudden succession of
people and I would far rather they were people that no one else had heard of. I've done, you know,
rather they were people that no one else had heard of. I've done, you know, a guy who used to escape from change
of an English-Trainian-Roman India, I've done.
Another chap who was the last person to know her
to say it across the Pacific without a map.
But they're not known these people,
and they have great stories to tell.
So, why be a version to eulogizing, I guess that's not quite the word, right word, but why not? Why the
disinterest in famous people? Just because there's been so much about them usually.
And my imagery comes a bit late because
something digital, you know, we'll put a digital news story up, but
the print edition obviously has to wait, you know, for a few days before
it gets out there. By which time the broadsheets will be absolutely full of this person.
Everyone will have read it over the weekend, they'll be absolutely full of it, with a subject.
So you've got to produce something else, something quite different. It's a bit of a challenge,
I don't mind having the challenge, but that's the problem. I see. It's saying something new. It's saying something that other people haven't read yet.
No, that's such an interesting way to think about it. Your instinct to take a unique view
on things, I think, is why I liked the Pontches pilot books so much. I just thought it was
absolutely incredible. I know I came to it quite late, but I never thought I would be interested in this person.
And I guess I'm not even sure.
I thought it would be possible to write an interesting book
about this person.
I so loved writing that book.
The great thing about him was that he's a character
that no one knows very much about.
So they've had to invent him all through these centuries.
And they've made them as they
want them to be. So he's totally invented, yet oddly, there's a sort of hologram that forms from
all these different punches pilots and you get an impression of one character in the end. That was
what I thought was so amazing. Now I loved him and after that I looked around quite hard to try and
find other people who were similar, who had been similarly treated.
I really couldn't find any.
I wrote about Orpheus, for example.
These are little bit the same because he still has some sort of purges and clouds in
the modern world.
People have heard of him and people know the legend the same way that they know about pilot
washing his hands.
The lovely way we still talk about pilot washing his hands. The lovely baby still talk about politicians washing their hands.
You know, this is the character that's lived all the time.
He's still with us.
That's why I liked him so much.
I think what the main thing that struck me out of the book
that I thought was so compelling and fascinating about it
is I just came away with this sort of sense that pilot was a guy with a shitty job and a shitty boss stuck in a shitty situation trying to...
I don't want to say do the best he could, but trying not to screw it up and doesn't screw it up.
Yeah, because if you screw it up, you're dead. It's quite.
You know, it's a simple story in a way. He's just got to keep on the right side of Tiberius.
He's got this horrible boss. He doesn't really know what he's doing in Judea.
He's got rival powers. He's got the Jewish authorities as well. He doesn't have any sympathy
for Jews. The Romans didn't. So he's just, he doesn't quite know how he can hack it, actually.
But he's a soldier, he's not a diplomat.
I think that's really important, that basic thing.
And he's not a philosopher either.
And just to think, I mean, I've read Seneca's letters
many, many times and I never stopped to think,
like basically Lucilius, as you say in the book,
Lucilius, Senaqa's friend, and Pilot have,
like the same job, or close to this,
like it's not only a job,
but it's a job that lots of people in the Roman Empire had
in different places.
And that was how I had to research it
because it's plenty of the younger as well. He's a governor
So you've got these people who are governors
So you know what their daily duties were for example is just frustrating that pilot every day would have had to send reports back to Rome
And imagine his report of the trial of Jesus for example
But they've all gone they've just disappeared so
We don't know what he thought about the job or anything about it,
but you can look at Pliny's letters and see what the frustrations were,
which is mostly missing Rome.
And civilized life as they saw it, they really thought they were in the outback.
Pliny was in quite a good place.
Yeah, and the silly is too, but he's a thinker, isn't he?
He's interested in what Senna has got to say.
I can't imagine pilot in that situation.
I don't think he'd ask questions.
Where he says that famous question
at Jesus's trial, what is truth?
He's not saying it as a philosopher,
we're really wanting to know the answer.
He's saying, go on, you tell me what truth is. And then he walks out really wanting to know the answer. He's saying, go on, you
tell me what truth is, and then he walks out and he doesn't hear the answer. That's actually
the crucial thing that he doesn't care.
Yeah, I mean, one thing that's always struck me when I read biblical texts versus when I
read things like Santa Claus letters or any of the sort of Roman texts, is I don't know if this is how it's taught
or we teach them like they're in separate universes,
but I don't think the average person gets the sense
that these things are happening at the same time.
You know, that pilot is the contemporary of philosophers
who are also household names.
And like, so what's so remarkable, you know,
you read the Bible, Jesus is speaking in these parables
and then the disciples are sort of credulously,
you know, speaking about these miracles and whatever.
And then you pick up a Marcus Aurelius,
or Ascentechus, or Ascissaro, and you're like,
wait, there's not the same amount of mysticism
and sort of vagueness that when I read Seneca, I feel like you are hearing a man on earth.
And then when you are reading the Bible, it is, I think, by deliberate, it is supernatural
and mystical and all these things, but they're
happening at the same time.
Yes, exactly.
I asked, you know, the thinkers today, the logical thinkers, you know, the docks is and
the Ben Adenri Levy and all these people are at the same time as the mystical teachers
in India, for example, the gurus there. It's the same difference
in a sense. I mean, the Romans, I don't think made head or tail of anything Jesus was saying
if they picked it up. The letters you get, of course, after the death of Jesus when the Christians
begin to do things, and you've got plenty of opinion of them as being crazy.
things and you've got plenty's opinion of them as being crazy. And because I've done this, I've written an email about this before, I said something
like, okay, it's a philosopher born around the turn of the millennia. They're born in a
province of the Roman Empire. They become wildly famous in their own lifetime. They talk
about how not judging others when you yourself are covered in sores.
You know, they talk about forgiveness. They talk about love. And then, you know, at the end,
they are sentenced to death by the power of the Roman state quite gruesomely, right? Am I talking
about Seneca or am I talking about Jesus, right? They have essentially the same arc, the same story, their philosophies are both,
you know, popular 2000 years later, but when you sit down and read Jesus first read
Seneca, you know, you're on different planets. Yes, you are. Yes, but all these things we know can
coexist. They can exist now, but they can exist then as well. I mean, the problem, the major
problem with Jesus for the Romans, I think
was in his mysticism because things like mythrace and begin to get a little bit like it, it's more
that Jesus said he was a king. It's more to setting himself up as one of these sort of barbarian rulers
if you like, who they've got no time for because they think they're primitive and they also think
they're a threat to the
stability and honor of the Republic. If you like, this is a political judgment, but it's his kingship that seems to worry, is it any worries, pilot more than anything else.
You so beautifully contra, I thought it was a great connection. You talk about sort of
the British bafflement with Gandhi. Oh, I love you. Yes, that was exactly. And then it's in the 1920s for
Heavens, they, you know, it's not back all those millennia. But how do you cope with this person?
There's the famous scene from John's Gospel. I mean, we don't know. Maybe a holy apocryphal where
pilot takes him into the Praitorium and actually just they sit down and have a conversation.
I guess it's possible it might have been in Greek or something. They could have told to each other directly. I still find that a little bit
strange. But anyway, he asks some interesting questions there. He gets really worried when he asks
Jesus, you know, where are you from? And Jesus doesn't answer him. That drives him mad because
the gods come down from heaven
and they take weird forms. And if the god can come down and becomes intoxicated with backing
rights and things, then maybe this weird individual can be a god as well.
Yeah, and there's a quote I found from Churchill where he says, it's alarming and nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a sedacious middle
temple lawyer now posing as a faker of a type well known in the east striding half naked
up the steps of the vice regal palace while he is still organizing and conducting a campaign
of civil disobedience to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor King.
And I felt like that's so perfectly captures the Roman discussed anger and confusion when
this guy is brought before pilot.
Yes, completely.
It really does.
Is that a great quote, isn't it?
Gosh, I sometimes think if it hadn't been for the Second World War,
we'd really be dismissing Churchill as our
about right wing.
Yeah, bigot, which he was really first was in Parliament.
He had some weird mental block when it came to India.
He could not conceive of a world in which Indians
and India deserve to be anything other than a possession
of the empire, I guess.
It seems so, yeah, yeah, it did.
It was a nice, I was very pleased to find that
because it was a nice direct parallel, I felt.
Well, and you can imagine, you know, that's Churchill.
Churchill is smart and generally capable of understanding other people's perspective.
And he's a good diplomat.
You know, but not me.
So you.
Yeah.
But you imagine if that's what's coming from, if that's the bafflement at the top from
the smart people, as it goes down in the, in the hierarchy and it, those people are
capable of even less nuance.
They're just following orders.
That's where you get horrendous heinous policy.
And so you imagine Tiberius operating at one level
who is a flawed individual.
And then you have his emissary pilot
way down the chain who's even less qualified to be there.
You get the conflict that can't be resolved.
Yes, you do. Exactly. Exactly. Mind you, I mean, you talk about this gruesomeness.
I mean, crucifixion was very gruesome, but it was also incredibly common. That's the thing.
I mean, violence, success, I crucified 200 people at one time.
So we mustn't begin to think really that he was particularly
gunning for Jesus. He was just putting in like a common criminal. That's the thing.
Yes, yes. And that's his job is to do that. His job is to sentence the people to death.
Yes. I mean, I was quite proud of my line, I think, at the end of the trial scene, which is
and then he went to lunch. Because, you know, it's just another day, another mad Jewish guy.
Right. And another obstacle to, you, you, you present him repeatedly as this kind of guy who
just wants to go back to his life, he wants to not be
bother, he wants things to be peaceful and calm and you know the people are the impediment
to that happening.
Yes, yes, definitely.
I just felt he was uncomfortable all the time he was there and of course he ends so
unhappy as well for him really,
and he just, well, who knows quite what he does at the end, it's all very mysterious. But it was
somehow suspected that he committed suicide because he left in disgrace. And if you leave in disgrace,
then you do kill yourself because it's better for your family if you just kill yourself. And don't
and you do kill yourself because it's better for your family if you just kill yourself.
Don't try to hang about.
And I guess to be fair to pilot though,
at your point not only did it do this a lot,
but I think better people in less difficult situations
did justice badly.
I'm thinking I wrote in my book Lives of the Stoics,
I talk about the trial of Justin or Justin
Martyr.
You know, the judge in that case is rusticist whose markets are really his philosophy
teacher.
This brilliant wise man that markets rights and meditations about how thoughtful and loving
and kind he is.
And then you have him, you have him bringing down the full power
of the Roman state on this guy who's basically brought up
on not just Trump's up charges,
but also kind of pointless charges.
Like the offense is so much more minor than say,
Jesus' offends.
And you know, it ends in the same gruesome way.
Yeah, but they're dangerous, These people. That's the trouble. And also when you look at the structure
of Pydit's trial, it does go through the proper procedures. He does call witnesses and he does
try and question the question they accused as he ought to. It's not quite a kangaroo court.
No, I've felt like with with rusticists and with with pilot, they were trying to get the
to let the person off. And they were not being met halfway.
No, this is the problem. They were trying, but it didn't quite work.
We don't really know how hard pilot tried,
because it's been written afterwards.
And certainly, the writers of the Gospels were trying to exonerate the Romans
and put the blame on the Jews.
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Although, you know, if the idea of sewing the blood of the martyrs to create the seat of the
tree, there is this sense also like with Socrates
that they didn't want to be let off.
They wanted to be let off.
You're quite right.
Now Socrates positively downed that hemlock.
They don't want to be there.
They're fired up with the cause.
Yeah.
So you're dealing with that as well
as somebody who's trying to be a judge.
And it's true now.
You look at some of the judges of people like the followers of Charles Manson, for example,
and how crazy they were in the dog.
It was obviously they weren't going to change their opinions just because they were on
it in a court of law.
Yeah, we don't.
They didn't have the equivalent of letting someone off for not being fit to stand trial.
No, they didn't have that.
And even if they did, I'm not sure, you know,
if Jesus or Seneca or Justin would have allowed
that defense to be argued on their behalf,
that is the tricky nature of the whole conflict.
Yeah, I think you're right.
They were not wanting to be let off at that point.
And you get this too in the various, you know,
in the English wars of religion,
we didn't quite have wars, but anyway,
one king or queen would put a lot of Catholics to death,
another would put a lot of Prozostos to death.
And among all those martyrs,
there were lots you didn't want to be exonerated
or didn't want to have a pardon. Yeah. I can imagine pilots saying, help me help you.
Help me help you. I can't, I think that sounds a bit sort of help me help you. What does
it sound like? It sounds American actually. But you do make the point. I mean, as much as we want
to say, oh, they're chertrap bite or oh, the person want like some of the one of the most fundamental
parts of the Roman system was the idea. I mean, Sennaka writes a whole essay on it,
the idea of clemency or mercy. they had a certain amount of discretion. And in
fact, some of the more robust thing comes in. Yes. Yeah. There are these celebrated Roman
examples of the person tries to assassinate the emperor and the emperor lets them go.
And that mercy was so fundamentally lacking in these cases. Yes, though not in, as I say, not quite in the case of Pylota, he did try to release
Barabbas.
And that was part of the tradition that, in fact, he had introduced of letting free a prisoner
on at the Passover because it was a great Jewish feast, and it was the feast of liberation
if you like for the Jews.
So he would free
the prisoner they wanted. So there's a bit of clemency that he had introduced, so he does
occasionally try, but then he really screws it up by doing something like putting all the
Roman banners on the Praitorium, or using all the money from the temple to build an aqueduct. He just absolutely clothed when it comes to Jewish sensibilities.
He just doesn't think about them.
You get the sense as you portray him in the book,
there are natural politicians,
there are people with a deafness for public opinion,
and you really get a sense of the absence of it in someone like pilot. Just how ill-suited
he was for the demands of the job. Yeah, I mean, I can't stress enough that he's a soldier
because it's not really stressed in all the poor trails of him. He's always the judge and his
judges' robes. But in the one inscription we've got of the stone he put up to
on a type he is, he calls himself a prefectus. That's a mounted knight. And that's how he sees
himself. He doesn't call himself, you know, whatever you dex or or gubernator or any of these
administrative terms. He is a fighting man. And he does take troops into battle
occasionally. It's recorded anyway. He's a brute in a job that requires immense deafness and
interpersonal skills. Yes, I wouldn't say those too hard with him.
personal skills. Yes, I wouldn't say there's a two-hout with him. And you know, I contrast this. I've always found Seneca's brother who basically finds himself in the same position
as pilot clearly has some of those skills and deafness and he figures out what and how to get,
to extricate himself from the situation.
Oh, that's clever.
Now, is that mentioned in Cedricus letters,
or is it from another source that you know
what his brother did?
No, no, his brother, his brother, Galeo.
That's his brother, that's Cedricus brother.
Right.
And so, you know, he does, you know what, speak of sort of brutal colonial examples in
the United States during the civil rights movement, there were sort of two ways that local
governments resisted segregation, right?
There's Bull Connor, who was famously-
I know what about him.
Yeah, he'd walk up to the peaceful protesters
and he would react with violence and brutality.
Yeah, and then there were other sheriffs whose names
were not immortalized into history, who understood.
And obviously in both cases, their motives
and their cause are morally repugnant, so I should
just say that.
But there were other mayors and sheriffs who understood that the goal of the civil rights
protest was to get arrested, was to provoke the violence and the overreaction of the
state to get on television and leverage public opinion.
But there were places where Martin Luther King would go and try
to stir those things up and be less successful because he was treated gently, respectfully,
not with, not with photogenic violence, right? And when I contrast pilot and, and Galeo, I go, oh, okay, they're both the colonial power,
but one understands, hey, it's actually letting him go
is better for law and order than arresting and executing him.
That's true.
No, absolutely.
I remember I did an obituary of one of the sheriffs,
the sheriff who attacked the marches on the bridge in Selma is a long time ago, because
I can't quite remember his name, but he did more for the civil rights movement than
quite a lot of other people, because he was so violent that he opened the eyes of a
lot of Americans to the injustices that were going on.
And so these people, despite everything
they think they stand for, actually promote the cause that they're trying to quell. It's
a nice irony really. But I think it was Jim Clark, the sheriff.
It was Jim Clark indeed, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, no, and yeah, that is the irony, Pontius Pilate is more responsible than anyone else
for the spread and the flowering of Christianity you could argue. You could argue that. In fact,
you know, he's a saint in the coptic church because he witnessed to Christ, which is quite extraordinary.
And if it was, in fact, God's will,
that Jesus died in the manner that He died.
Ah, yeah, now this is a really interesting line of,
what it just is, to me, pilots like a cog in a huge machine,
He can't get out of it.
If you believe in the redemption story
that Adam and Eve sins are therefore Christ's
centred deem mankind, you can't stop it, you mustn't stop it, you must enable it, and that's
what Pilate does. And in the medieval mystery place, his wife, who in the Bible tries to save Christ,
is a body and the harlot of the devil, because she actually tries to, tries to rescue, she tries
to stop this great plan of redemption. I love this upside down thinking that you get.
I think the stoic metaphor for the logos, you know, the way in the Bible was the idea that
in the Bible was the idea that we're like dogs tied to a cart. We can either trot cheerfully alongside or we can be dragged along the way, but we're heading where the cart is heading
either way. You can see an element of that in Pilate's life if you believe the story and the
arch of it, that he had no way out of it.
He had no way out, exactly.
And the same is true for people like Judas and for the Jewish high priest.
Everybody who's involved in this story is somehow courting it, they're caught like flies.
They really just can't escape this.
So I thought was one of the things that most intrigued me about the tale, the extent
to which Pudet had any free will at all in this.
What I thought was so fascinating about your book though, I wondered if this was an artistic
trace. You first off for a person for whom which there is like basically no historical
fact known about it. You say at the beginning there's like three things known for absolute certainty about pilot
You know you managed to produce so much detail which is fascinating, but
I you spend almost no time on the crucifixion itself
No, I think that is much. I mean pilot wasn't there
so as soon as he
As soon as he's left the room the next thing he does is he writes the sign that goes over the cross, which is Jesus and that's the king of the Jews.
And that's the very interesting notice in itself.
And the story is the priest came to him, Jewish high priest said, what have you written there that he is not our king and what is this and pilot said,
what I've written, I've written.
So get lost.
But it's, that's the only part he plays really
in the crucifixion, he's off the scene.
But he would have seen the earthquake.
What I wanted to do was to show pilot noticing
these things that happen in the crucifixion,
from a distance thinking, that's strange.
I, I think one of the most interesting things I found
was a decree that came out just after the crucifixion,
which says, would everybody please stop moving bodies out of tombs
and putting them somewhere else?
It's almost, it's almost Shakespearean,
how you do it where Shakespeare has all the drama,
all the dialogue, and then the action,
the battle, whatever, it happens right off screen, right?
It's sort of like, that's right.
And the crucifixion, which is the story that,
as far as people know, pilot goes,
that I expect it is you're gonna be walking up
the Via Dolorosa, as you're carrying the thing,
is the way I thought all that would be in there.
No, I'm not gonna put it in there to tell you the truth.
I shortly after I had finished pilot,
I thought, who am I going to do now?
Oh, perhaps I'll do Jesus. I thought, no, don't even think about it, just don't go there,
because it's a really dangerous subject, actually. There are just too many people with invested
interest with their own sort of investment in the tale of Jesus, of all sorts of persuasions of religion, politics, this
that and the other. I just couldn't go there. But this is pilot story and I don't like either
in my books or in the O'Bits to read, to go into other characters at all. I want to stay
with my central character and what he's doing and how he's seeing things from his or her point of view.
That to me is the most interesting thing.
That's why you haven't got the crucifixion because you can read so many accounts of it elsewhere,
different accounts. You don't need another one, but you do need perhaps pilot standing at the window,
sitting in his bath in the bath water or just suddenly trembles with the earthquake.
I don't think I did write that actually,
but it's a thought.
You speak of images and perspectives.
You wanna hear my favorite joke about the last supper?
Yes, why not?
Okay, so they walk into a restaurant,
and Jesus says, we'll have a table for 26.
And the host just looks at him and says, but there's only 13 of you. And he says, we'll have a table for 26. And the hostess looks at him and says,
but there's only 13 of you.
And he says, yeah, but we're all gonna sit on the same side.
Which is the oddest choice about Da Vinci's last supper.
Why are they not sitting around the table?
Why would they all be on one side of the table?
Like they're at a banquet.
And the audience is looking up at them.
I mean that that was the convention at the time. I mean all the medieval banquet scenes
they're all on one side of the table unless you know unless the seniors that the servants who come
and bring them something because they didn't have servants in the upper room one imagines but
the servants who normally came and brought food to banquets would need to have full reach across the table.
It's just possible that they all said it once.
I don't know. I don't know. It is funny, though, just that you bring that up, right?
That it's like the table arrangement and how are they bringing the food in?
Like as different and as strange and surreal
as all these stories are, I mean,
there's an anecdote in one of Seneca's writings
where he's talking about not getting seated
at the good table, like at a restaurant or a party.
Yeah, that's right.
This is life, man, not that much has changed.
It is life, I love that.
Say it wasn't at the good table.
I'd have thought Senator, like a good story, would not mind which table he was at.
I think that if I'm remembering the passage correctly, he's arguing with himself why
this shouldn't matter to him.
But he's still, you know what I mean?
He's still a human and it still does bother him.
Actually, that makes a lot of sense that he would argue with himself and say, come on,
why do you care?
I was struck by the fact that in the intro to the book, you bring up one of my favorite
passages and meditations.
Although speaking of tables and feasts, there's this other beautiful passage in meditations,
where Marcus really is talking about how what's laid out before him is a dead pig and rotten
grapes.
He's trying to sort of do what Seneca is doing, which is it doesn't matter, don't take this seriously.
But that sort of ties into a point you made
at the beginning of the book,
which I actually don't know if I totally agree with.
But you say, Marcus Aurelis and his meditations
tries to describe at one point
the beauty of small, almost unexpected effects in nature.
He wonders at the cracks and the little breaks
in the surface of a loaf, figs by which when they are ripe and open and gaved, and all of which when
they fall by themselves and are nearly decaying are particularly pretty to look at. And then
you say, this image of putrescence as beauty brought me up short. These were different
eyes of looking at the world.
Yeah, I really feel that quite strongly.
I feel it most strongly, I think I can't remember whether that's in the introduction,
when I look at the paintings on the walls of Pompeii,
because in some ways they look almost modern.
And in other ways, you see, they really aren't.
They're quite strange and mystical and misty and that their pieces of myth and I suppose we we've we know some of the myths we don't know
some of the others but there's scenes that they paint there's something odd
about the sunlight they see sunlight in a different way there's scenes
aren't lit the way we like them. I have something about the human body, too. It's all, you don't see it in
the sculpture because the sculpture... It looks like a person. Yes, but the paintings, there's
there's another outlook there, which I mean all three history, the painter has the outlook of his
age somewhat, but I was just fascinated to try and pin down what it was about
those Roman paintings. I've always been struck by that in Homer where he talks about the wine dark
scene. I know I've never understood that. Why not forget it. I live by the sea. The sea goes
every color you can think of, but it does not ever go red or whitey or that color. Every other color, or almost yes, it does.
But I think it's a strange image that I wonder if it's
really a good translation,
because I'm afraid I really don't know Greek.
Well, no, your point is interesting, right?
There's sort of a duality to the Romans, right?
And the one aspect Marcus feels so relatable
and so human.
And then, you know, five passages later,
he's like, I'm so proud of myself,
I never raped my slaves.
You know, you get the sense that they're like us
and then they're totally not like us at all.
And deadly, no.
I mean, I love the bit in Ovid, in the Azamatory,
where he says, you know, just take your girlfriend to the games.
It's great. And you can put a cushion under her feet, and then you'll get a look at her ankle and everything.
And then when they start killing the beast and the men, she can hide her head on your shoulder.
And that's such fantastic, dual image of this horribly barbers gain, but quite a modern
idea you take your girl and go in the back row.
Yes, exactly.
Or the beauty in the ordinary, which is what I've always taken the passage you quoted to
me in the way that bread breaks open.
Yes, exactly.
That does feel so, you could plug that in. You could plug in
other more modern examples and feel like that passage was written in a book. Yes, you could.
Where do you look at Dutch painters and Spanish painters in the 17th century? And then
yeah, painters painters of today or the pre-Rafelites,, everybody who looks at things in detail or not even those particular
definite lines, but impressionists too can bring out the beauty in just as you say,
a loaf of bread or in a flour or in a plate, yeah, the artist side.
Yeah, and then, you know, even with, on the one hand, the sort of the logic-ness and the realism of the Romans
that make it incomprehensible,
that make Jesus incomprehensible to them.
At the same time, it's not like they didn't believe
in a bunch of preposterous myths
and believe that God's law of the monarchy.
In fact, any old thing, yeah, I mean,
one thing I love about the Romans is they are actually really open to other
religions and the soul souls, the Egyptians, the fire, you know, you can have a baboon
headed God if you like in this sort of thing.
It's really pretty tolerant at that level because they think they're all fairly silly except
for, you know, the better of the Greek gods, the more powerful Greek gods, and then of course
you got your empress becoming gods as well. So there's gods and gods.
It's almost as if the Romans were like, look, you can believe whatever you want, but wink,
wink, none of us believe in any of this, right?
Yes, that's right.
And then when the Christians were like, no, no, no, no, we're serious. They didn't know how to handle it.
Oh, you're right. Yes, it's true. It's because they didn't feel that I would I say they that's
too generalist in a way because there obviously were Romans who thought pretty deep about these things.
And I must say when I read Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, I'm always very struck
by how close they get to Christian love and that kind of thing. They didn't express it that
way. But that and also to the sort of almost Buddhism sometimes in their sense of wanting
to go into meditation and know themselves. That's the thing, know thyself. There's always such a strong streak of that
coming through the ancient world. There's always people practicing that all over the place.
Yeah. Well, you mentioned in the book, you have a big passage from Cicero that struck me and
he's talking about the idea of civic courage, right, that there's the soldier on the battlefield, but then also in moments
of leadership or politics, you need people who are unafraid to make difficult decisions
to handle nuance, et cetera.
You know, again, that strikes, it's such an ancient idea, and then that's like what we're
complaining about today with our own politicians.
It's a lack thereof.
Yeah, exactly.
The lack thereof, exactly.
I feel that America in recent years
has got much more interested in Rome, in ancient Rome.
Whether it's because there's a Senate in both places,
it's something about Rome,
those seems rather familiar.
And I think especially when Trump was president,
this appalling man at the head of a big nation.
And it's very much about being imperial, in fact.
He could have been Tiberius.
He didn't have all the sexual Piccadillos of Tiberius quite.
But I see Amura as a Catalina, or a Catalina, forget her name.
Oh, do you see him as that?
Yeah.
I feel like actually if we had the same understanding
if we were as steeped in the classics and in myth, I feel like the founders would have
recognized him. They would have been so horrified to think he could even happen in that that republic they'd set up so carefully that could you reduce a populist like that?
When I actually think that's what in a sense has made Trump so successful is not the right
word.
Let's say unbeatable, like difficult to do away with, is that we actually don't have, he feels so unprecedented and abnormal.
When in fact, as far as the classical literature goes, there are a lot more analogs and examples,
but we don't have the understanding or the shared language to be able to talk about it.
So it just feels like this kind of totally new unstoppable force when it really is a
very ancient reincarnation of a timeless type of character. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I was just
wondering who the modern Cicero could be who could maybe it's the New York Attorney General.
Maybe it's the New York Attorney General. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
Maybe that's the problem is we don't have any more Cicero's.
Not that Cicero was so perfect, but...
Well, no, he wasn't, but still.
No, he's pretty good.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think that's really interesting.
The general sense America sees itself as the new Rome, perhaps the new Roman too many ways that are not so great.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I've just probably taken it too far, but I think there's a little, there's a
little Cincinnati in Biden, the sort of old guy gets called back.
Yeah, the old guy gets called back.
That's true.
Wasn't there someone else who's called the American Cincinnati?
Someone who was actually a farmer, actually plowing his acre in Illinois.
It wasn't Lincoln, was it?
No, Washington was a farmer and every time he resigned his commission, it was to go back
to my farm.
Yeah.
And obviously he worked his farm about as much as
probably the original Cincinnati did, which is to say that slaves did all the work. Yes,
exactly. But no, there was even after the American Revolution, there was a society. It was called
the Society of the Cincinnati. And the officers, it was actually quite alarming to the founders.
They thought it was this sort of hereditary aristocracy that they were worried about, but
it was all the officers and their sons that were veterans in the Revolutionary War were
considered sort of the members of this society that was modeled
after Cincinnati. Interesting. I hadn't ever heard of that.
Yeah, it's interesting. There's a book by Tom Ricks that I really like called First Principles,
and it's all about the philosophical readings of the founders. Like what were the founders reading?
You know, John Adams was fascinating to know.
Yeah.
Yes.
It's a really interesting look.
Well, I have one last question for you
and it's a bit of a softball and then we'll leave it there.
So what is truth?
Oh, God.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
That is not a softball, Ryan, you know that. Well, I think I think love is truth.
Hmm. What do you mean? Well, I have I have to think that life is love. Yeah, that's what we're
here for. That's how the world works. And that's how the world works and that's how the world turns.
In fact, even if it doesn't look like it, it's a sort of scientific principle of attraction
and repulsion and all these scientific laws come down to really sort of electromagnetic
fields and until where you get a sense of attraction or repulsion things.
So, you know, I think when you, I feel that when you are in a state of being either in love with the world or in love with someone,
the way life is enhanced by that, the way you can walk in nature and find everything, suddenly looking sharp and defined and so on.
That's about as near as I can get to it.
That's what I think is.
And when you think pilot was asking that question,
I took it as him almost saying,
eh, what is truth?
Like, like, this is true.
Yes, I'm saying, ah, what is truth.
I'm sure he is saying that.
Yeah, you tell me what truth is, you go on then.
I always used to hear a Yorkshire voice.
The voice of someone like, I've got Yorkshire relations and farmers and some of them are
quite down to earth. Go on, you tell me.
I was saying, I don't even think he was saying, you tell me, I think he's saying, like,
and what even is that? Like he's saying
it's nothing like the truth.
I think he's saying it that way too. Yeah, I think he's saying it that way too. I mean,
you imagine a soldier, a just an ordinary GI being asked that question. Yes.
And what's the response would you get? Yeah, he's saying we're in the middle of a battlefield here.
Don't talk to me about these high-minded ideals.
And that's right.
That's right.
Yeah, it's such a, it's, again, it's, even if real or not, someone had, it is so literary
and perfect to have these two characters meet each other.
Because it's fantastic.
They could have never have connected.
Yeah, I mean, we just don't know whether they did or not,
but that was what made me write the book in the first place.
That in Westminster Cathedral,
there's a relief by Eric Gill,
who's a famous British sculptor of Jesus and Pilot.
And they're on the same level,
that their heads are on the same level level and they're looking at each other. And it's such a powerful look and you can see Pilate thinking who the heck is this
and Jesus is just fixing him with this stare and they're both in profile.
It's so powerful.
And when I was there I thought,
when we know I've got so much information about Jesus.
So much has been written. Has anyone written anything about pilot answer? No.
But here they look equal. Yes. And even if they were standing face to face,
there was a million miles. A billion miles. Yes, exactly. That's what's so interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah, even if they were speaking the same language, which they weren't, right?
They could, well, they could just about have managed it possibly.
Because Greek was, you know, there's this famous sort of Greek,
tmotic Greek, which probably they could have managed the same way people can just about
manage to speaking this to each other now, if they don't have a common language they can try it. But the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the reality. No, exactly. That is just so interesting. In that confrontation, I think I say it perhaps in
the book, it seemed to me the most momentous in human history. Those two men just looking at each
other and complete. Completing comprehension, well, I think even on Jesus side, probably
a certain amount of incomprehension, even if you give him his full divinity, probably
can go.
No, I didn't quite get into the mind of a Roman, but maybe he could.
No, I was just reading this book about the history of the Comanche people in the United
States. And they would have these diplomatic sit downs between a Comanche warrior and some US politician.
And you're just like, oh gosh, I would have liked to bring that in.
That would have been fascinating.
They could have never talked to, I mean, they're negotiating a treaty, but they fundamentally
don't even, one believes you can own the land,
and one believes that you can't... You cannot... How do they negotiate?
Exactly, how can you? I mean, I expect, like me, you look in wonder at those photographs of the Indian
Chiefs in the 1850s, or whenever they were first taken. They're looking in those eyes. It's so far away and it's so removed
from the man with the camera.
And it's looking sort of humiliated
and proud at the same time.
It's extraordinary.
I find them so compelling, there's photographs.
Yeah, you think about they are part of a tradition
that has gone back tens of thousands of years.
When the Europeans would fight each other over these intractable issues, they were still fundamentally
sharing most of the same belief and history, whether they accepted it or not. And then people came
over to the new world, but it wasn't a new world. It was a different world that had existed independently
without any overlap for eons.
And then they're trying to work out petty differences
over who gets to hunt here or there.
I mean, it's a chasm you can't bridge.
No, no, absolutely.
Gosh, you wonder what they you can't bridge. No, no, absolutely.
Gosh, you wonder what they were thinking, don't you?
There's chiefs when they look at these little jump top,
European creatures in their tall hats
with their big bulky cameras.
Yeah, awful, in some studio or other.
Everything could have, it wasn't that long ago.
No, it really wasn't 150 years.
I mean, not my perhaps brother more than that.
No, no, I mean, yeah, I mean, these things were still going on
in the 1880s, 1890s.
Yes, they were actually remarkable.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, at least this was so long ago, right?
Like this was 2000 years ago.
I always make sure my subject's safely dead.
I said, he wouldn't write a contemporary biography.
I didn't think too much trouble for my friends
and mine who've done it.
Yeah, you wait for them to die,
and then you sum up their entire life in four columns
with complete certainty and control.
It's quite a...
Well, I was amazed this morning,
because I got on to Google or whatever it was to see,
because I couldn't decide whether to do
Stockton Rush of the submersible or not for the obituary.
In the end, I thought I wouldn't,
but there are already six things
that claim to be biographies of him up there on Amazon.
Can you imagine?
What a what an to imagine. That guy, the quote, he said, you will be remembered
for the yes, for the things you made. Pilot is remembered for the mistakes he made.
And to be, I mean, it's, you couldn't make it up. I mean, he's like the great grandchild of people who died on the Titanic.
Yes.
Human beings just make the same mistakes over and over and over and over again.
That's what we do.
Over and over and over.
That's what being human seems to be about.
And I guess we do gradually learn as we get through.
We all learn a little bit, but there are always people coming up behind you.
Oh gosh. Well, thank you so much. This was a true honor, and I have been raving
about this book, which is just absolutely incredible.
Well, you are very kind, right? I'm delighted that you have been been because I'm very fond of it myself actually if I say so
you know all my books I think that one I say is the one I missed enjoyed doing and it's
it's a masterpiece no question. It's been a really interesting conversation. Likewise.
You're sending me back to I'm gonna pick up Senica tonight. I feel I'm a bit rusty on him.
pick up Senica tonight. I feel I'm a bit rusty on him.
Please do. I'll send you my book, The Lives of the Stokes, I think you'll like it. I would love to see that. Will you do that? I will.
Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes,
that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show.
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