It is a well-known and for centuries universally received tradition, besides being a fact recorded by one most respectable and trustworthy author (who, besides, was not a Christian, but a Jew)--a fact without which the allusions to it in various ancient authorities, together with Phlegon the Chronologer's subsequent recital of Tiberius's extraordinary conduct, would be unintelligible and unaccountable--that Pontius Pilate, harassed by the unappeasable reproaches of his wife, and stung by something within his own bosom which allowed him peace no more, until (sleepless, and unable again, unable for ever, to sleep) he bequeathed, some years afterward, by an awful death, whether intentional or not, his name to a great Alpine hill, a hill not thenceforth named, or to be named, while time and mountains last, by any name but "Pilate's" among distant and then barbarous nations--it is well known, I say, that Pilate sent to Tiberius Cæsar a long and minute relation concerning the life, the death, and the disappearance from the tomb of him whom he had scourged, and whom the Jews had crucified, together with a notice of the supernatural wonders wrought by him; his previous notorious announcement of his own intended resurrection; the directly consequent and equally notorious precautions taken to hinder it; the disappearance, in spite of this, of the body; the testimony of the soldiers that they were witnesses _to_ the abstraction, which they were unable to stop, because they alleged that they were not witnesses _of_ it (being buried in sleep); that, in fact, their testimony proved nothing save the body's disappearance from the massively-sealed tomb (which would have stood a small siege); the failure of the Synagogue to account for the body; the account of it by the disciples; and, finally, the admissions of the Pharisees that all their prophets had become unexplainable if this was not their Messiah, yet that such a conclusion was to them impossible, because he was to have been their king, and a conquering king, and to have founded an empire extending through all nations and tongues; their stern and ever-growing disaffection to the Roman rule; the universal amazement, excitement, and anxiety arising from the circumstance that, while neither the Synagogue nor the soldiers could throw any light upon what had become of the body, the disciples of him who had predicted his own resurrection explained the event openly and fearlessly by stating that they had again and again met him since the previous _feria prima_; that they cared for no protection except his alone; that the dead was once more among them--living, and henceforth immortal--their Master and God; the ultimate Judge of this world, and the foretold Founder of an everlasting kingdom! Pilate added several strange and astounding particulars.