And they spit upon him and took the reed and smote him on the head. And after they had mocked him they took the robe off from him and put his own raiment on him and led him away to Golgotha. Those were Roman soldiers that drove the nails into his hands and feet.
“They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall.”
They elevated him upon the cross, and then sat down to gamble for his raiment, while they cast occasionally a glance at his dying agonies. It was the Roman centurion, commanding these soldiers, who, seeing the earthquake and those things which were done, feared greatly, saying:
“Truly, this was the Son of God!”
Afterward it was a Roman soldier that thrust a spear into the side of the crucified, to make sure that he was dead, and it was a group of them that were placed as a watch at the sealed tomb. One wonders if the miraculous facts about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus were ever fully reported to the emperor Tiberius and whether he ever gave any consideration to their deep significance.
Tiberius was not a great builder as Augustus had been. Yet he built or enlarged the imperial palace on the Palatine. It was on the north corner of the hill and overlooked the Forum. Some ruins of it remain, as well as some of the villas that he erected on the island of Capri. There are said to have been ten of the latter. Statues and other relics of them now adorn the grounds and halls of modern summer resorts near the spots which he selected. A triumphal arch was erected in his honor in the Roman Forum. After him also was named the city of Tiberias, mentioned in John vi, 23, which was built by the tetrarch, Herod Antipas, to be the Roman capital of Galilee, and which was adorned with a palace and a stadium. On the edge of that Palestinian lake, which is sometimes called in Scripture the Lake of Gennesareth, sometimes the Sea of Galilee and sometimes, from this city, the Sea of Tiberias, the traveler finds to-day its modern representative, broken and picturesque.
It was to me a memorable night when, many years ago, I encamped, with some friends, among its ruins and watched the storm, which, as often in the days of Christ, had come up suddenly and was raging on the waters. The fishermen, Simon and Andrew and James and John, as they plied their craft of old, could see across the waves the walls of the palace by day and its gleaming lights by night. And not far away in the city of Capernaum, on the shore of the same lake, Matthew, when he was an unpopular publican or tax-gatherer, sat at the seat of the customs and took in the tribute money, which was for the treasury and government of Tiberius at Rome.
It is not more than fifteen miles away over the hills to Nazareth, where Jesus was brought up; and we may well suppose that the wonderful boy sometimes came from there and looked down from the precipitous cliff into that deep natural basin where the lake lies and upon this city of Tiberias upon its bank. The shores were then inhabited by a great and busy population. About twelve miles long and six miles broad, it was then dotted by many a sail. Caravan roads connected its cities, and many races and languages were then represented there. Any youth from a rural home would take rich delight in coming thither and so getting into touch with the great outside world. And it was the scene of so much of his holy manhood’s ministry that it seems almost a desecration that the name of Tiberias should also have been fastened there. It has now little more to attract the eye than the circling banks, the rippling waters and the blue haze on the surrounding hills. Yet to the Christian student, acquainted with its past and in love with the character of Him who lived and taught there, it has taken on an interest that belongs to no other locality on earth.
“O Galilee! Bright Galilee!
Hallowed thoughts we turn to thee.
Woven through thy history
Gleams the charming mystery
Of the life of One who came,
Bearing grief, reproach and shame,
Saviour of the world to be,
God with us by Galilee!”
It is thought to have been in the reign of Tiberius that the two granite obelisks, known as Cleopatra’s Needles, which in the nineteenth century before Christ had been set up by Thothmes III, a monarch of Egypt, before the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, were removed to Alexandria and placed in front of a temple dedicated to Cæsar. In our own time they have been carried very much further from their original location. One of them stands on the Victoria Embankment in London. The other is in Central Park, New York. The latter is 68½ feet high and nearly 8 feet wide on each side of the base. Who knows but that Joseph and Mary on their flight with the sacred child into Egypt from Bethlehem looked with wonder on its curious hieroglyphics at Heliopolis? At any rate, as it stands now in the park of an American city, it is a venerable and heavy link between the life of to-day and far distant ages.