Why Did the Romans Mock Jesus as "King of the Jews"?

Because the emphasis has always been laid on the idea that the joke was on the Romans: the belief or understanding from hindsight that Jesus was not merely "King of the Jews" but "King of the Universe", we often do not think about why the Romans might have felt so threatened by this working-class Jew from the backwater province of Galilee. After all, Rome was one of the most religiously tolerant civilizations ever to have existed. However, that tolerance had its limits (which later become very evident when so many Christians were martyred). Most people focus on the idea that the real sensitivity lay with the Roman commandment that "you can worship whomever and however you want, just so long as you also worship the Emperor". But in Jesus' time, the imperial throne had not completely bought into this Egyptian concept of rulership (i.e., that the the supreme ruler was somehow divine even though they had to make their daily visits to the toilet like every other humble human being on the planet). What we must consider at this stage is that Jesus was a threat to Rome in terms of his teaching. Jesus' value system was a complete inversion of the Roman value system. In fact, it was inimical to it; thus we have the sufficient reason for a Roman governor to take the extreme measure of having a pacifist rabbi crucified. Jesus was martyred for his beliefs alone, not because he led an army to overthrow Roman rule in Palestine. Rome was ruled by emperors, who were treated as though they were super-human, even though they were often inanely fallible, voraciously greedy, and sometimes astonishingly sadistic. Conversely, Rome did not even consider the majority of its population -- its slaves -- to be at all human. Rome did not value women, except for the bloodlines they biologically carried, their ability to reproduce heirs, their maintenance of household order, and the temporary form of their youthful beauty. Roman women were not appreciated for their minds, souls or ideas, nor the venerable character of beauty into which women can grow. Friendship, at least among the literate men who considered themselves the models of Roman society, was not based on a sense of personal fellowship and mutual affection, but in fickle opportunism for congruent political, social and economic advantage and ambition. Worst of all, Romans felt no guilt in physically, emotionally and sexually abusing their slaves, neglecting the health of their slaves, and some of these slaves they malnourished and literally worked to death. On the other side, you have Jesus. Jesus taught people to value equally the humanity and moral worth of of men, women and children, regardless of ethnicity, class or station in life. These were not marginal teachings of his. They were core teachings. He had female disciples, and though downplayed in the Canonical Gospels, they are evidenced in the non-canonical but spiritually authentic Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Phillip and Gospel of Thomas. Jesus was a sincere intellectual and spiritual liberator, but his teachings crashed on the sharp rocks of the aristocratic ideology of Rome. Spartacus the Slave, who died about a hundred years before Jesus did, also believed in the dignity of all human beings, and tried to break through to a world where social justice existed. The Romans sent him to the same fate as they would Jesus. If nothing else, Rome was consistent.