Pontius Pilate is the procurator of Judea who judges Yeshua Ha-Notzri in the novel written by the Master: a man who concludes that the prisoner committed no crime and yet confirms the death sentence.
He appears in chapter 2, on the morning of the fourteenth day of Nisan, with an unbearable migraine and hating the smell of rose oil. The prisoner calls him "good man" and tells him that his head "hurts so badly that you cowardly think about death." Pilate even drafts a lenient sentence, but the record captures Yeshua's words against the power of the Caesars, and the procurator, who hears within himself the law's threat of the offense against majesty, confirms the death.
After the execution, the chief of the secret guard, Afranius, reports to him the condemned man's phrase: "of all human weaknesses, the one he considers worst is cowardice." Pilate then asks Afranius to take measures for the safety of Judas of Kerioth, and Judas is stabbed to death that night. When Matthew Levi swears to kill the traitor, Pilate tells him: "It was me."
The punishment lasts about two thousand years. In chapter 32, he sits in a stone armchair, sleepless at every full moon, wanting to follow the path of the moon to talk with the prisoner, to whom he promised to say something. The Master, the author of the novel about him, frees him with a phrase, and Pilate runs along the lunar path after the dog.