And then Pilatus brought Him out, bleeding, in the purple, and said, Behold the man. As though he were asking them to look at what they had done and be ashamed of it. They were not ashamed. They cried out, Crucify him. And when they said, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend, I watched Pilatus understand that he was finished either way.
He called for water. He washed his hands in front of all of them, and he said, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
I have thought about that basin of water for years. I think he thought about it longer than I did. You do not wash your hands of a thing that does not stay on them.
Do you remember the inscription? He wrote it himself, in Hebrew and Greek and Latin:
Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. The chief priests came and begged him to change it, to write that the man had only said he was their king. And Pilatus, who had given way to them on everything else that day, would not give way on that. What I have written I have written.

Read More The Letter of Lucius Varenus – the point of view of a Roman soldier present during the crucifixion of Jesus