 The seventeenth @-@ century English poet Aemilia Lanyer ( whom A. L. Rowse believed to be the dark lady of Shakespeare 's sonnets ) wrote a poem , Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum ( 1611 ) , in which Pilate 's wife is the main speaker . She makes reference to the Fall of Adam and Eve and argues that Pilate 's sin in killing Christ abrogates the curse on Eve , since Pilate sinned by not listening to his wife ( unlike Adam , who sinned by hearkening to the voice of Eve ) . Pilate 's wife ( who is never named in Lanyer 's poem ) thereby becomes a champion of women 's emancipation . 
