courtyard, under the arcade and up to the balcony, where they placed him before the Procurator’s chair. The man was dressed in a shabby, torn blue chiton. His head was covered with a white bandage fastened round his forehead, his hands tied behind his back. There was a large bruise under the man’s left eye and a scab of dried blood in one corner of his mouth. The prisoner stared at the Procurator with anxious curiosity. The Procurator was silent at first, then asked quietly in Aramaic: ‘So you have been inciting the people to destroy the temple of Jerusalem? ‘ The Procurator sat as though carved in stone, his lips barely moving as he pronounced the words. The Procurator was like stone from fear of shaking his fiendishly aching head. The man with bound hands made a slight move forwards and began speaking: ‘Good man! Believe me . . . ‘ But the Procurator, immobile as before and without raising his voice, at once interrupted him : ‘You call me good man? You are making a mistake. The rumour about me in Jerusalem is that I am a raving monster and that is absolutely hqmhmjm km fjrjf j ojpj njfkikjlnk fjqji jijhf fj ojh sdjksdfsdfsdlgkj sdflkjsdf lksdjfsdfsdf