"Pontius, my dear host," the latter continued. "Have twenty years sufficed to make my hair white enough and my cheeks sunken enough for you to no longer recognize your friend Aelius Lamia?"
On hearing this name, Pontius Pilate got down from the litter in as sprightly a manner as the weariness due to his age and the gravity of his bearing allowed him. And he twice hugged Aelius Lamia.
"It's certainly good to see you again," he said. "Alas, you remind me of the old days, when I was procurator of Judea in the province of Syria. I saw you for the first time thirty years ago. It was in Caesarea where you came to drag out the vexations of your exile. I was quite happy to mitigate them somewhat, and you, out of friendship, Lamia, followed me to that sad Jerusalem where the Jews filled me to the brim with bitterness and disgust. You stayed as my guest and my companion for more than ten years, and we both of us, talking of Rome, consoled ourselves, you for your misfortunes, me for my promotions."
Lamia again embraced him.
"That's not all, Pontius. You fail to recall that you used in my favour your credit with Herod Antipas and opened your purse to me liberally."
"Don't even mention it," Pontius replied, "since, when you were back in Rome, you sent me by one of your freed men a sum of money that paid me off with interest."
"I don't think I'm out of your debt for any amount of money,
Pontius. But tell me, have the gods granted what your heart
desired? Do you enjoy all the happiness that you deserve?
Speak to me of your family, your fortune, your health!"
"I've retired to Sicily where I own lands that I cultivate and sell the wheat. My eldest daughter, my very dear Pontia, now a widow, lives with me and keeps house for me. Thanks be to the gods, I have not lost the strength of my faculties or my memory. But old age does not come without a long procession of aches and pains. I suffer atrociously from gout. And you see me at present seeking in the Phlegraean Fields a remedy for my afflictions. This land that burns, from which, at night, flames escape, exhales acrid vapours of sulphur which, so they say, soothe pain and restore flexibility to joints and limbs. That's what the doctors assure me of anyway."
"May it be what you experience yourself, Pontius! But, gout and insect bites notwithstanding, you hardly look as old as me, though you are, in fact, ten years older. It's certain you've retained more vigour than I ever had, and I'm glad to find you still so robust. Why, dear heart, did you so prematurely reject public office? Why, after you left your governorship in Judea, did you live on your estates in Sicily in voluntary exile? Tell me what you got up to from the moment that I ceased to be there as a witness to your actions. You were preparing to put down a Samaritan revolt when I left for Cappadocia, where I was hoping to derive some profit from raising mules and horses. Since then I haven't laid eyes on you. What was the success of that expedition? Tell me about it. I'm interested in everything that's happened to you."
Pontius Pilate shook his head sadly.