The nation of Samaria did not escape without trouble, and the man who instigated them into it was one who had not compunction about lying and who was able to contrive ways and means to please the multitudes. He summoned the people together on Mount Gerizim, which they considered to be the holiest of mountains. He assured them that once they were gathered he would show them the sacred vessels that laid under that place because Moses had placed them there. Convinced of the man's pronouncements they gathered, armed, at a village called Tirathaba, from whence they would ascent to the mountain in a multitude together.
Pilate, however, confounded their plan. Having seized the roads, he fell upon the people gathered in the village with a large regiment of cavalry and foot-soldiers. Thus were many killed in the confrontation, many took flight or were taken prisoners. Many of the leaders and the most powerful who escaped Pilate ordered that they should be slain.
When the tumult had died down, the Samaritan leadership sent an embassy to Vitellius—a former consul and now the president of Syria—and accussed Pilate of the murder of those who were killed, for they had not gone to Tirathaba to rebel against the Romans but to escape Pilate's oppression. So Vitellius sent his firend Marcellus to take care of affairs in Judea while ordering Pilate to leave for Rome and give an account to the Emperor of the accusations brought against him by the Jews. So, after ten years in Judea, Pilate left for Rome in obedience to Vitellius' order which he dared not disobeyed. But before he could get to Rome, Tiberius had died.
Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 13.4.1-2