With the account of the Wilderness prophet’s execution went the story, too, of how King Aretas of Arabia had sent his couriers to Machaerus to threaten Herod Antipas with war because of the Tetrarch’s having divorced the King’s daughter and made her supplanter Herodias his Tetrarchess. Soon rumors began to spread that war with Aretas was imminent and that the Arabian ruler was likely any day to bring his army surging across the borders of Israel to punish his former son-in-law.
Even before the arrival at Caesarea of Claudia and Longinus, the stories from Machaerus had reached the Procurator Pontius Pilate. Their lateness, she explained to Pilate, had been unavoidable; they had waited to join a caravan journeying westward rather than risk the hazards of traveling with only two servants through a region frequented by robbers and zealot revolutionaries.
Pilate appeared to accept without reservation her explanation; he indicated in no way that he might be jealous of the centurion. His attitude exasperated Claudia all the more.
“He can’t be that stupid,” she fumed one day to Tullia, with whom she had long come to talk frankly and in utter confidence. “He surely knows about Longinus and me. Yet if he’s in the least bit jealous of the centurion, he’s careful not to let me know. It’s insulting, Tullia, his indifference to me. It’s humiliating. Why do you suppose he acts that way?”
“But you are the stepdaughter of the Emperor, Mistress. What could he do, even though he is the Procurator?”
“He could be a man!” Claudia snapped. “He could kill Longinus, or try to, and give me a lashing!”
The maid shook her head. “No, Mistress, not even a Procurator would dare lay a hand on you, or anyone for whom you held high regard.”
“But I’m his wife, Tullia.”
“Yes, but you are also the Emperor’s stepdaughter, Mistress.”
Immediately upon their return to Caesarea from Machaerus, Longinus had prepared a comprehensive report to Sejanus in which he related the unfortunate events that had come to such a dramatic climax at the Tetrarch’s birthday banquet. The message was dispatched to Rome on an Alexandrian grain ship that had paused for a day in the harbor at Caesarea.