It was my observation that it was the custom of the country for every man to call every other man a madman.  In truth, in my judgment, they were all mad.  There was a plague of them.  They cast out devils by magic charms, cured diseases by the laying on of hands, drank deadly poisons unharmed, and unharmed played with deadly snakes—­or so they claimed.  They ran away to starve in the deserts.  They emerged howling new doctrine, gathering crowds about them, forming new sects that split on doctrine and formed more sects.

“By Odin,” I told Pilate, “a trifle of our northern frost and snow would cool their wits.  This climate is too soft.  In place of building roofs and hunting meat, they are ever building doctrine.”

“And altering the nature of God,” Pilate corroborated sourly.  “A curse on doctrine.”

“So say I,” I agreed.  “If ever I get away with unaddled wits from this mad land, I’ll cleave through whatever man dares mention to me what may happen after I am dead.”

Never were such trouble makers.  Everything under the sun was pious or impious to them.  They, who were so clever in hair-splitting argument, seemed incapable of grasping the Roman idea of the State.  Everything political was religious; everything religious was political.  Thus every procurator’s hands were full.  The Roman eagles, the Roman statues, even the votive shields of Pilate, were deliberate insults to their religion.

The Roman taking of the census was an abomination.  Yet it had to be done, for it was the basis of taxation.  But there it was again.  Taxation by the State was a crime against their law and God.  Oh, that Law!  It was not the Roman law.  It was their law, what they called God’s law.  There were the zealots, who murdered anybody who broke this law.  And for a procurator to punish a zealot caught red-handed was to raise a riot or an insurrection.

Everything, with these strange people, was done in the name of God.  There were what we Romans called the thaumaturgi.  They worked miracles to prove doctrine.  Ever has it seemed to me a witless thing to prove the multiplication table by turning a staff into a serpent, or even into two serpents.  Yet these things the thaumaturgi did, and always to the excitement of the common people.

Heavens, what sects and sects!  Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees—­a legion of them!  No sooner did they start with a new quirk when it turned political.  Coponius, procurator fourth before Pilate, had a pretty time crushing the Gaulonite sedition which arose in this fashion and spread down from Gamala.

In Jerusalem, that last time I rode in, it was easy to note the increasing excitement of the Jews.  They ran about in crowds, chattering and spouting.  Some were proclaiming the end of the world.  Others satisfied themselves with the imminent destruction of the Temple.  And there were rank revolutionises who announced that Roman rule was over and the new Jewish kingdom about to begin.