http://www.biblestudy.org/roman-empire/ ... syria.html
Only Pilate has a name resembling a military term: "armed with javelins" or "spears in hand".
According to Gunnar Samuelsson, the stauros would be a pole or a stake, that would make Jesus more precisely an impaled man. Is there some link with the ethymology of Pilatus? This is only a very modest conjecture.
I read:
http://www.abarim-publications.com/Mean ... -ys8CQpo6wAn identical word pila — but this time short for pigla, taken from the root pig-, hence the verb pango, meaning to fix or set firmly — means pillar and is synonym of the word columna, from whence comes our English word "column". The related adjective pilatim means "with pillars", and see our article on the name Stoics for a possible significant association.
If the ''so-called Pillars'' are represented allegorically by ''the scribes and pharisees'' in the pauline Mark, then, by allowing the crucifixion of ''Jesus''/Paul, Pilate is posing as literally ''the man with the Pillars''.
Was Pilate introduced by ''Mark'' only in virtue of the simbolic meaning of his name?
To think otherwise would have the same probability that an historical Judas Iscariot existed, under the coincidence that his epithet “Iscariot” seems to denote either Ish-karya (Aramaic for “the false one”) or a pun on Issachar, “hireling” (Miller, p. 65), thus one paid to hand Jesus over to the authorities.