Antiquities — Book 15

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

How, when the city of Jerusalem had been taken by Sossius and Herod, Antony beheaded Antigonus at Antioch, and Herod put to death forty-five of the leading men among Antigonus's partisans in Jerusalem and extorted money from the city. How Hyrcanus, first king of the Jews and high priest, was released by Arsaces, king of the Parthians, and returned to Herod. How Herod, having appointed Aristobulus, his wife Mariamme's brother, high priest, arranged not long after to have him destroyed. How Cleopatra, scheming against the kingdoms of the Jews and the Arabs, managed to obtain portions of them from Antony. Cleopatra's visit to Judea. How Herod made war on Aretas at the time when Antony was defeated by Caesar in the battle at Actium. Concerning the earthquake that occurred in Judea, and the destruction of men and livestock. Herod's speech to the Jews, who were disheartened by their sufferings and the defeat they had suffered. How Herod, being obliged to go to Caesar after his victory, put Hyrcanus to death. How he received the kingdom from Caesar as well, and escorted him as far as Egypt. How Herod, on arriving at Alexandria, was honored by Caesar. How, on his return, he was provoked by false accusations to kill his wife Mariamme. Concerning the famine that occurred in Judea and Syria, and how Herod saved the populace and the cities. The Greek cities Herod founded. How he tore down the ancient temple in Jerusalem and, six hundred years later, raised another in its place, double the former in its dimensions. This book covers a period of eighteen years.

Sossius and Herod, then, having by force taken Jerusalem and captured Antigonus besides — this the previous book has already told us; what follows on from it we shall now relate. When Herod had been entrusted with rule over the whole of Judea, as for the populace in the city, all those private citizens who still favored Antigonus's cause he advanced and promoted, while those who had chosen the side of his opponents he never ceased punishing and chastising day by day.

Above all others he honored Pollion the Pharisee and Samaias, his disciple: for while Jerusalem was under siege these two had advised the citizens to receive Herod, and for this they now received their reward. This same Pollion, at the time Herod was once on trial for his life, had foretold — rebuking Hyrcanus and the judges — that Herod, once he escaped, would take vengeance on all of them, and in time this came to pass, God bringing his words to fulfillment.

At that time, once he had gained control of Jerusalem, Herod gathered up every ornament in the kingdom, stripping the wealthy of their property besides, and having amassed a great quantity of silver and gold, he gave it all as gifts to Antony and the friends around him. He put to death the forty-five leading men of Antigonus's faction, stationing guards at the gates of the walls so that nothing might be smuggled out along with the dead, and had the corpses searched: whatever silver or gold or any treasure was found on them was brought up to the king. There was no end to the hardships: on one hand the greed of a ruler who found himself in need consumed everything, while on the other the sabbatical year was forcing the land to lie unworked, for that year had then arrived, and sowing the land during it is forbidden to us.

Antony, having taken Antigonus prisoner, at first decided to keep him in chains until his triumph; but when he heard that the nation was in revolt and remained loyal to Antigonus out of its hatred for Herod, he decided to behead him at Antioch — for the Jews were scarcely able to keep still at all. My account is confirmed by Strabo of Cappadocia, who writes as follows: "Antony beheaded Antigonus the Jew, after he had been brought to Antioch. And he was thought to be the first Roman to behead a king, since he supposed there was no other way to change the disposition of the Jews so that they would accept Herod, set up in his place; for not even under torture would they consent to acclaim him king — so exalted was their regard for their former king. He therefore reckoned that the disgrace would diminish the memory of Antigonus, and would also diminish the hatred felt toward Herod." So much for Strabo.

Now when Hyrcanus the high priest, who was a prisoner among the Parthians, learned that Herod had gained control of the kingdom, he came to Herod, having been released from his captivity in the following manner. Barzapharnes and Pacorus, the Parthian generals, had taken captive Hyrcanus — who had first become high priest and then king — along with Herod's brother Phasael, and were leading them off to Parthia. Phasael, unable to bear the disgrace of his chains, and judging a death with honor preferable to any life, became his own murderer, as I have already related. But when Hyrcanus was brought before him, Phraates, king of the Parthians, treated him more leniently, having learned beforehand of the distinction of his noble birth. For this reason he released him from his chains and allowed him to take up residence in Babylon, where a large community of Jews also lived. These honored Hyrcanus as high priest and king, as did the whole Jewish nation settled as far as the Euphrates; and this was gratifying to him.

But when he learned that Herod had taken possession of the kingdom, his hopes shifted course: he had from the start been affectionately disposed toward Herod, and expected that Herod would remember the favor he owed him, since he — Hyrcanus — had, when Herod was on trial and about to be punished with death, rescued him from the danger and the penalty. He therefore made overtures, being eager that the Jews there let him go to Herod. But they clung to him and urged him to stay, citing both the services and the honors due him, saying that nothing was lacking in the honor they showed him, such as is due to high priests or kings, and, more importantly, that there — in Judea — he could not even share in these honors on account of the mutilation of his body, which he had suffered at the hands of Antigonus, and that kings do not repay favors in the same way once received, as they did when they were still private citizens — fortune not unreasonably changing men's character.

Though they urged such considerations, appealing to his own advantage, Hyrcanus longed to leave; and Herod, writing to him, urged him to entreat Phraates and the Jews there not to begrudge him — since he would share the kingdom with him with all his power — for now, he said, was the time for him to repay the favors for which he was indebted, having been raised and preserved by Hyrcanus, and for Hyrcanus to receive them in turn. Writing this to Hyrcanus, he also sent to Phraates an envoy, Saramalla, along with many gifts, asking him, out of the same generosity, not to hinder the favors owed to his own benefactor.

But his zeal did not spring from this motive: rather, because he feared that his own rule was not held by right — reversals brought about for good reasons — he was anxious to have Hyrcanus in his own hands, or else to remove him altogether; and this indeed he did later. At that time, however, once Hyrcanus had arrived, persuaded to come, with the Parthian's consent and after the Jews there had contributed money for the journey, Herod received him with every honor, gave him the first place in assemblies, and, seating him ahead of himself at banquets, deceived him by calling him father, and by every means contriving that his plot go unsuspected.

He also arranged other matters to suit the interests of his rule, and from these arose the strife within his own household as well: for, wary of appointing any man of distinction as high priest of God, he sent for a priest of no great standing from Babylon, named Ananel, and gave him the high priesthood.

Alexandra could not bear this insult at once — she being the daughter of Hyrcanus and wife of Alexander, son of king Aristobulus, and had by Alexander two children: a son, Aristobulus, of striking beauty, and a daughter, Mariamme, married to Herod, remarkable for her loveliness. She was troubled and took hard the dishonor done her son, that while he was still living some outsider should be judged worthy of the high priesthood, and she wrote to Cleopatra — a certain musician assisting her in arranging the delivery of the letter — asking Antony to obtain the high priesthood for her son.

When Antony responded rather half-heartedly, his friend Dellius, who had come to Judea on some business, saw Aristobulus and was struck with admiration at his youthful bloom, marveling at the boy's stature and beauty, and no less at Mariamme, the king's wife; and he made it clear he considered Alexandra the mother of remarkably beautiful children. When she entered into conversation with him, he persuaded her to have portraits of both painted and sent to Antony, since — once he had seen them — he would refuse her nothing she asked. Elated by these words, Alexandra sent the portraits to Antony. And Dellius embellished the matter, declaring that in his opinion these children seemed born not of mortals but of some god — all the while scheming on his own account to draw Antony toward pleasure.

Antony, however, was ashamed to send for the girl, married as she was to Herod, and, guarding against the accusations such a summons would provoke from Cleopatra, wrote instead asking that the boy be sent, with due honor, adding — if it did not seem burdensome. When this message was brought to Herod, he judged it unsafe to send Aristobulus, who was of striking beauty (he happened to be sixteen years old) and of eminent birth, to Antony, who held more power than any other Roman at that time, and who was ready to submit him to his own passions, procuring his pleasures openly by virtue of his power. He therefore wrote back that, should the young man once leave the country, everything would be filled with war and turmoil, the Jews hoping for a change of regime and a revolt in favor of another king.

Having thus put Antony off with these excuses, he decided not to keep dishonoring the boy and Alexandra any longer — and, since his wife Mariamme was also urgently pressing him, to give the high priesthood back to her brother, judging it moreover to his own advantage, since once honored with the office the young man could not travel abroad. He convened an assembly of his friends and accused Alexandra at length, claiming she had secretly plotted against the kingdom and was working through Cleopatra to have him stripped of his rule so that the young man might take over affairs in his place through Antony. And in wanting this, he said, she acted unjustly, since in doing so she would also be depriving her own daughter of the honor she held, and would be stirring up turmoil over a kingdom he himself had won through great toil and no ordinary dangers.

Yet he would not, he said, let his memory of her misconduct turn him from dealing justly with them; rather, even now he was giving the boy the high priesthood, and explaining that he had appointed Ananel earlier only because Aristobulus was then still an infant. He said all this deliberately, calculating precisely — exactly what he intended — so as to deceive the women and the friends present with him; and Alexandra, overcome at once by joy at this unexpected turn and by fear born of suspicion, defended herself with tears, saying that regarding the priesthood she had pursued every possible course only out of the dishonor she felt, but as for the kingdom she neither had designs upon it, nor would wish to take it even were it offered to her, and that now she had honor enough through his rule, and security enough, since his ability to rule more effectively than others benefited the whole family.

Now, overcome by his kindnesses, she said she would accept the honor for her son and would be obedient in every respect, and she begged pardon in advance for anything she might have done rashly out of resentment at ill-treatment, prompted by her rank and the freedom of speech it allowed her. Having spoken to one another in this way, they parted — more solemnly than swiftly — clasping hands, with, as they supposed, all suspicion now removed.

King Herod at once took the high priesthood away from Ananel, who was, as we said before, not a native but one of the Jews settled beyond the Euphrates — for no small number of this people had settled in Babylonia. From there Ananel came, of high-priestly stock, and had long been on close terms with Herod. Herod himself had honored him when he took the kingdom, and now dismissed him himself, in order to quell the strife within his household, thereby acting against the law: for no one else had ever been deprived of the office once he had received it. Rather, the first to violate the law was Antiochus Epiphanes, who removed Jesus from office and installed his brother Onias in his place; the second was Aristobulus, who removed his brother Hyrcanus; and Herod was the third, who transferred the office to the young Aristobulus in his turn.

For the moment, then, it seemed he had healed the troubles within his household. Yet, as one might expect, the reconciliation did not proceed free of suspicion, for he feared Alexandra — both on account of what she had already attempted and lest, should she find the occasion, she might again venture some revolutionary undertaking. He therefore ordered her to remain confined to the palace and to do nothing on her own authority, and careful watch was kept over her, so that nothing she did, even in the course of her daily routine, escaped notice.

All this gradually provoked her and bred hatred in her, for, being full of a woman's proud spirit, she chafed under this surveillance born of suspicion, and thought herself deserving of anything rather than living out her life deprived of her freedom of speech, under the mere trappings of honor while in servitude and fear. She therefore sent repeated letters to Cleopatra, lamenting her situation and appealing to her to help as far as she was able. Cleopatra told her to escape secretly to her in Egypt, taking her son with her.

This plan was adopted, and she contrived the following scheme: she had two coffins prepared, as though for the removal of corpses, and placed herself and her son inside them, ordering the servants who were in on the secret to carry them out by night. From there a road led to the sea, where a ship stood ready to carry them across to Egypt. Aesop, a servant of hers, blurted this out to Sabbio, one of her friends, thinking he already knew and could be told.

But Sabbio, who had formerly been an enemy of Herod's — being reckoned one of those who had conspired against Antipater in the poisoning affair — expected to exchange his enmity for goodwill by informing on her, and reported Alexandra's plot to the king. Herod let the attempt proceed as far as the actual undertaking and caught her in the very act of the escape, but let the offense pass — not that it would have been at all difficult for him, however much he might have wished it, to deal harshly with her; but he did not dare, since he knew Cleopatra would not tolerate being given cause for her hatred against himself. Instead, he made a display of magnanimity, forgiving them out of consideration.

He was, however, fully resolved to remove the young man from his path altogether; but he judged it more plausible, for the sake of concealment, not to act quickly or immediately after these events. And when the Feast of Tabernacles fell due — a festival observed among us with the utmost strictness — he let those days go by, and gave himself over to festivity, he and the rest of the people along with him.

Yet even amid these very festivities something occurred that stirred him and openly spurred on his resolve — envy. For the young Aristobulus, now seventeen years old, when he went up to the altar according to the law to perform the sacrifices, wearing the vestments of the high priests and carrying out the rites of worship,

He was the handsomest of men, and taller than his years would suggest, and in his very features he showed plainly the nobility of his lineage. A surge of goodwill toward him ran through the crowd, and the vivid memory of what his grandfather Aristobulus had accomplished rose before them; little by little they were overcome and betrayed their feelings, rejoicing and weeping together, and sending up toward him cries of blessing mixed with prayers, so that the people's goodwill became plain to see, and their open acknowledgment of what they had suffered seemed too bold to make under a king's eye. After all this Herod resolved to carry through the design he had formed against the youth. When the festival had ended, he was entertained at Jericho, Alexandra receiving them there, and, showing the young man every kindness and drawing him on to unguarded drinking, he was ready to join in his games and to play the youth's part in whatever pleased him. Since the climate of that place ran rather hot, the company, gathered together, soon went out in high spirits and stood by the pools, which were large, around the courtyard, to cool themselves in the fiercest heat of noon. At first they watched the servants and friends swimming; then, when the young man too was drawn in — for that too Herod had contrived — the friends to whom the task had been assigned, as darkness came down, kept pressing him and holding him under, as if in sport while he swam, and did not let go until they had drowned him utterly.

So Aristobulus perished, not having lived out eighteen years, having held the high priesthood one year, which Ananel now recovered again. When the disaster was reported to the women, at once, with the sudden change, mourning arose over the body laid out before them, and grief beyond bearing; and the city, when the news spread, was in anguish throughout, every household making the calamity its own, as though it had happened to no stranger. Alexandra was seized with grief even more, because she understood the full truth of the loss: the pain of knowing how it had been done pressed on her all the more, yet she forced herself to endure it, looking ahead to a still greater evil. Many times she came close to taking her own life with her own hand, but she held back, asking herself whether by living she might yet be of use to the one destroyed by so lawless a plot; and she reckoned that giving no hint of her suspicion that her son had been deliberately murdered would serve her better when the time came for revenge. So she bore her suspicion with self-command.

Herod, for his part, worked to persuade everyone around him, plausibly enough, that the boy's death had not come about by design, not only observing every outward form of mourning but shedding tears and displaying a genuine turmoil of soul — perhaps because the horror of what he had done overcame him at the sight of the boy's youth and beauty, even though he had judged the boy's death necessary for his own safety, but clearly also because he was working to construct his own defense. As for the expense of the funeral, he made an even greater display of it, providing lavishly for the bier and for the quantity of spices, and burying with him a great store of ornaments, so as to stun the women out of their grief and console them by this means. None of it, however, moved Alexandra; the memory of the wrong, ever more present to her, only sharpened her pain into open lament and a hunger for vengeance, and she wrote to Cleopatra of Herod's plot and of the boy's destruction. Cleopatra, who had long been eager to help her at her request and pitied Alexandra's misfortunes, took the whole matter as her own and kept urging Antony not to let the murder of the boy go unpunished; for it was not fitting, she said, that Herod, who owed his kingship to Antony and had no rightful claim to it among the truly royal houses, should get away with such lawless acts against them.

Persuaded by these arguments, Antony, who happened then to be at Laodicea, sent orders that Herod should come to clear himself of the charges concerning Aristobulus, since the plot, if indeed it had been his doing, had not been rightly carried out. Herod, fearing both the accusation and Cleopatra's hostility — she never let up in working to turn Antony against him — resolved to obey, since there was nothing else he could do; but he left his uncle Joseph as guardian of the government and of affairs there, and gave him a secret order that if anything should happen to him at Antony's hands, Mariamme should at once be put to death. For he himself, he said, loved his wife with deep affection, and he dreaded the outrage of her being courted by someone else for her beauty once he was dead; and in fact everything pointed to Antony's own desire for the woman, since he had long since heard reports of her beauty. So Herod, having given these instructions, and holding no secure hope for the outcome of the whole affair, set out for Antony. Joseph, meanwhile, in charge of the administration of the kingdom's affairs and for that reason in constant contact with Mariamme, kept up frequent conversations with her about Herod's business and, out of the respect due to her as queen, spoke often of his devotion and affection for her. When the women — Alexandra above all — mocked these words in their womanish way, Joseph, overeager to demonstrate the king's true state of mind, was carried so far as to reveal the order he had been given, offering it as proof that Herod could not live without her and, even should some terrible thing befall him, could not bear to be parted from her even by death. So much for Joseph. The women, as one might expect, took from this not the devotion in Herod's feelings toward Mariamme but the harshness of it — that not even in dying would he spare her the same ruin and violent death — and, seizing on this, they were filled with a grim foreboding at what had been said.

Meanwhile a rumor arose in the city of Jerusalem, put about by those who hated Herod, that Antony had tortured and killed him. The report threw everyone around the palace into alarm, as one would expect, and the women most of all. Alexandra persuaded Joseph to go out with them from the palace and take refuge with the standards of the Roman legion which was then encamped near the city to guard the kingdom, under the command of the son of Judas; for by this, first, if any disturbance should arise about the court, they would be safer having the Romans well disposed toward them, and further, she hoped that if Antony should set eyes on Mariamme he would grant everything, and that through this she would recover the kingdom and lack nothing that was due to those of royal birth. While they were caught up in these calculations, a letter arrived from Herod concerning the whole affair, contradicting the rumor and everything that had been said before. For when he had come before Antony, he quickly won him over with the gifts he had brought from Jerusalem, and quickly, through their conversations, brought him to a friendlier disposition toward him, and Cleopatra's arguments carried less weight in turning Antony against him; for Antony said it was not right for a king to be called to account for what he had done within his own realm — that would make him no king at all — but that, having granted him the honor and judged him worthy of the power, one should let him use it as he saw fit. The same held, he said, for Cleopatra's own interest, that the affairs of rulers not be pried into. On these matters Herod wrote, and went on to list the other honors he enjoyed with Antony, sharing his seat at hearings and dining with him every day, and how, though Cleopatra's slanders against him were bitter on this account, he came through them unscathed; for out of desire for his country she had been pressing to have his kingdom added to her own, and was working by every means to have him removed. Still, finding Antony just, he expected no further trouble, but rather that Antony's goodwill toward him and his kingdom and its affairs would now be firmer than before, since Antony, in place of what Cleopatra had asked for, had given her Coele-Syria instead, and by this had both placated her and put an end to the pleas she kept making regarding Judaea.

When this letter arrived, they gave up the impulse that had seized them, to flee to the Romans as though all were lost — yet their intention did not go unnoticed. When the king, having escorted Antony as far as against the Parthians, returned to Judaea, at once his sister Salome and his mother reported to him the plan Alexandra's party had formed, and Salome went further, bringing a charge against her own husband Joseph, making it out as slander that he had continued in intimacy with Mariamme. She said this out of a long-standing resentment toward Mariamme, because in their quarrels Mariamme, carrying herself with too much pride, would throw their low birth in their faces. Herod, who was always passionately and jealously devoted to Mariamme, was at once thrown into turmoil and could not bear the jealousy; yet, holding himself back from doing anything rash out of his love, driven hard by passion and jealousy together, he questioned Mariamme privately about her dealings with Joseph. She swore her innocence and set out, in her own defense, everything that could be said for one who had done no wrong, and little by little the king was won over and, overcome by his tenderness for her, moved past his anger, so that he began to apologize for having believed what he had heard, and to acknowledge with much gratitude her chastity. He confessed, for his part, how deep his affection and devotion to her ran, and at last, as happens in matters of love, they fell to tears, clinging to each other with great feeling. But as the king, more and more, kept affirming his devotion, insisting that it was not mere fondness, Mariamme spoke of the order he had given — that if he should suffer some harm at Antony's hands, she too, guilty of nothing, should perish with him.

At this word, once it had slipped out, the king was overcome with anguish; at once he let her go from his arms, cried aloud, and tore at his own hair, saying that here was plain proof that Joseph had shared intimacy with her — for she would never have revealed what he had told her in private unless great trust had grown up between them. In this state he came close to killing his wife, but, mastered still by his love for her, he checked that impulse, though the struggle cost him bitter and painful effort; Joseph, however, he ordered killed without even being brought before him, and Alexandra, as responsible for it all, he had bound and kept under guard.

Meanwhile trouble had also arisen concerning Syria, since Cleopatra would not let Antony rest from seizing everything; for she kept urging him to strip each ruler of his domain and give it to her, and she had great power over him through his desire for her. By nature delighting in greed, she left no wrongdoing undone: she had already had her own brother poisoned, foreseeing that the kingdom would fall to him, when he was but fifteen years old, and had her sister Arsinoe killed at Ephesus, where she had taken refuge as a suppliant at the temple of Artemis, through Antony's agency; for the sake of money, wherever she thought there was any hope of it, she spared neither temples nor tombs from plunder, no shrine being thought so inviolable that its treasures were not stripped from it, nor anything profane so forbidden that it was not touched, if only it promised to enrich her wrongful greed. In short, nothing was ever enough for a woman so extravagant and so enslaved to her desires, unless everything she set her mind on fell short of nothing she craved. For this reason she kept pressing Antony always to strip something more from others and grant it to her, and, crossing Syria together with him, she planned to make it her own possession. Lysanias, son of Ptolemy, she had put to death, charging him with bringing in the Parthians against the state's interests, and she asked Antony for Judaea and the land of the Arabs, demanding that their kings be stripped of their thrones. Antony, as it happened, was altogether mastered by the woman, so that he seemed to obey her wishes not merely through their intimacy but as though under the power of drugs; yet the sheer visibility of the injustice held him back from going so far, in his complete submission to her, as to commit the very worst wrongs. So, in order neither to refuse her outright nor to appear openly wicked by doing everything she demanded, he took portions of territory from each ruler and made her a gift of these instead.

He also gave her the cities within the Eleutherus river as far as Egypt, apart from Tyre and Sidon, which he knew from their ancestors to be free cities, though she pressed hard to have these too given to her. Having obtained these, Cleopatra escorted Antony as far as the Euphrates on his campaign against Armenia, then turned back and came to Apamea and Damascus, and passed also into Judaea, where Herod met her and leased from her both the portions given her in Arabia and the revenues around Jericho; for that land produces the balsam, the most valuable of all things that grow there and found nowhere else, and also great quantities of fine date-palm. While she was in these parts, and her familiarity with Herod grew, she tried to draw the king into intimacy with her, whether by nature simply indulging without concealment the pleasures that came her way, or perhaps feeling some real passion for him, or, what is more likely, laying the groundwork for a plot, preparing in advance the outrage that would then be done to him; in any case her whole conduct showed her mastered by desire.

Herod, who had never been well disposed toward Cleopatra, knowing her to be harsh toward everyone, and who now thought it right even to hate her, if out of sheer wantonness she had gone so far, and to strike first in punishing her, should she in fact set such a trap for him, brushed aside her advances, and took counsel with his friends, having her in his power, to kill her; for he would rid everyone of many evils, all those to whom she had already been harsh and to whom she still threatened to be so, and the same act, he thought, would serve Antony's interest too, since she would prove no more faithful to him either, should any occasion or need arise in which he required such loyalty. His friends, however, dissuaded him from this plan, first pointing out that it was not right, when he already faced graver dangers, to take on the most conspicuous risk of all, and pressing him earnestly to do nothing out of rashness; for Antony, they said, would never put up with it, not even if someone set his true interest plainly before his eyes, since the very belief that she had been taken from him by force and by plot would only inflame his passion the more, and no defense would appear moderate enough, given that the attempt had been made against a woman who held, in that age, the very highest rank, while any benefit claimed from it would only seem, alongside such presumption, a condemnation of Antony's own disposition toward her. From all this it was clear that great and unending troubles would engulf his kingdom and his house, when he could instead, by turning aside the

...the wrongdoing into which she was urging him, and to bring the crisis to a decent conclusion. By frightening him in this way, and pointing out plausibly how dangerous the venture was, they held him back from the attempt. He, however, courted Cleopatra with gifts and escorted her on her way to Egypt.

Antony, having taken Armenia, sent Artabazes son of Tigranes to Egypt in chains along with his sons, the satraps, presenting them to Cleopatra together with the whole splendor of the kingdom he had taken from him. Artaxias, the eldest of his sons, escaped at that time and became king of Armenia. Later Archelaus and Nero Caesar drove him out and restored his younger brother Tigranes to the throne — but that belongs to a later time.

As for the tribute owed on the territory Antony had granted him, Herod, thinking it unsafe to give Cleopatra any pretext for hostility, was scrupulous in paying it. The Arab, however, though he had undertaken to Herod to pay the tribute, supplied the two hundred talents for a time, but afterward grew malicious and slow in his payments, and even when he settled some part of it he seemed to do so grudgingly. When he went on behaving this way, and in the end was unwilling to do anything just at all, Herod was minded to move against him, but waited for his opportunity until the Roman war.

For with the battle of Actium expected — which took place in the hundred and eighty-seventh Olympiad — Caesar was about to contend with Antony for the whole of the empire, while Herod, since his land had long enjoyed good pasture and he had built up revenues and forces, mustered an allied force for Antony, attending most carefully to the preparations. Antony, however, said he had no need at all of his alliance, and instead ordered him to move against the Arab — for he had heard of the man's treachery both from Herod and from Cleopatra herself, who judged it to her advantage that each of them should suffer harm from the other.

When this message came to him from Antony, Herod turned back and mustered his soldiery as though about to invade Arabia at once; and once cavalry and infantry forces had been prepared, he arrived at Diospolis, where the Arabs met him, for the preparations for war had not escaped their notice. A fierce battle took place, and the Jews prevailed. After this a large Arab army gathered at Kanatha, places belonging to Coele-Syria.

Herod, having learned of this in advance, came bringing against them the greater part of the force he had, and drawing near he resolved to encamp in a good position, throw up a rampart, and attack from an advantageous position at the right moment. While he was arranging this, the mass of the Jews shouted for him to set aside delay and lead them against the Arabs; they were eager, trusting in their good order and buoyed by the spirit of those who had already won the first battle without even letting the enemy come to close quarters.

Since they were in an uproar and showing every kind of eagerness, the king decided to make use of the crowd's enthusiasm, and after declaring beforehand that he would not fall short of their courage, he led the way himself under arms at the front of them all, with everyone following in their proper units. Terror fell at once upon the Arabs; they held their ground briefly, but when they saw how irresistible and full of spirit the Jews were, most of them broke and fled,

and they would have been destroyed, had not Athenion done harm to Herod and the Jews. This man, a general of Cleopatra's stationed in the region and hostile to Herod, had watched events with careful preparation: if the Arabs achieved some brilliant success he had resolved to remain quiet, but if they were defeated — which is in fact what happened — he had made ready, with the men of the district who had gathered to him, to fall upon the Jews.

And so, at that moment, falling unexpectedly upon them when they were exhausted and thought they had won, he caused great slaughter. For the Jews, having spent their eagerness on their acknowledged enemies and now acting carelessly in the confidence of victory, were quickly overcome by these new attackers and suffered many blows in terrain impassable to horses and full of rocks, ground of which those making the attack had far greater experience.

While the Jews were faring badly, the Arabs took heart again, and turning back began killing those who were now in flight. Losses of every kind occurred among the slain, and not many of those who broke away made it safely back to the camp together. King Herod, having given up on the battle, rode off to bring help, but for all his haste he did not arrive in time; the Jewish camp was captured, and the Arabs, for their part,

had by no means enjoyed unmixed good fortune, having recovered against all expectation a victory that had very nearly slipped from them, and having stripped much strength from their opponents. From that point on, Herod turned to raiding, and by frequent incursions did great damage to Arab territory while encamping on the border; though in the open he generally avoided coming to close quarters, he made himself far from harmless through the relentlessness and diligence with which he attended in every way to his own men, repairing the setback.

Meanwhile, as the battle of Actium was being joined between Caesar and Antony, in the seventh year of Herod's reign, the land of the Jews was shaken by an earthquake as had never happened before, causing great destruction among the livestock of the country. About thirty thousand people also perished, crushed beneath collapsed houses; the army, however, since it was quartered in the open, suffered no harm at all from the disaster.

When the Arabs learned of this — and it was reported to them far worse than the truth by those eager to gratify the hatred of their listeners — they grew still more confident, believing that the country had been overturned to their enemies' ruin and the people destroyed, so that nothing remained standing against them any longer.

They seized the Jewish envoys, who had come to them concerning what had happened, and killed them, and advanced with the utmost eagerness against the Jewish forces. These did not wait for the attack, but, disheartened by their misfortunes and fallen into the deepest despair, abandoned the field. They had no hope of holding their own after being beaten in battle, nor of receiving help, given how badly things stood for them at home.

Matters standing thus, the king came forward, persuading the officers with argument and trying to restore their fallen spirits. Having first stirred and encouraged some of the better men, he now ventured — something he had earlier hesitated to do, fearing they might prove difficult under their misfortunes — to address the mass of the people as well. He made the following appeal to the crowd:

"I am not unaware, men, that many things have happened in this crisis to work against our undertakings, and it is natural that in such circumstances even those most distinguished for courage should not feel confident. But since the necessity of war presses upon us, and there is nothing among the things that have happened that a single deed well done cannot set right, I have chosen to encourage you and, at the same time, to show you the means by which you might hold fast to your own resolve.

I wish first to demonstrate, concerning the war, that we wage it justly, driven to it by the insolence of our enemies — for if you learn this, it will be the greatest cause of eagerness in you — and after that to show that there is nothing formidable in our own position, and that we have every hope of victory. I will begin with the first point, calling you yourselves as witnesses of what I say.

You know, surely, the lawlessness of the Arabs — men who deal so faithlessly even with everyone else, as one would expect of people who are barbarous and give no thought to God — but who have offended against us most of all, through greed and envy, lying in wait for our troubles at every opportunity. Why should I mention their many other offenses? When they themselves stood in danger of losing their own rule and becoming slaves to Cleopatra, who but we delivered them from that fear?

For my friendship with Antony, and his disposition toward us, were the reason these men suffered nothing irreparable, since the man took care to do nothing that might arouse our suspicion. Yet when he was nevertheless willing to grant Cleopatra certain portions from each of our kingdoms, I myself arranged even this, and by giving many gifts privately I secured safety for us both, taking the expense upon myself — paying two hundred talents outright and standing surety for two hundred more.

These sums went to swell her revenue, but we ourselves were robbed of them by these very men. And yet it would have been fitting for the Jews to pay tribute or a share of their land to no one at all — but if that could not be, certainly not on behalf of those whom we ourselves had saved — nor should the Arabs, who admitted they owed us this much consideration and gratitude, have thought it right to wrong us by defrauding us, and that though we were not their enemies but their friends.

Good faith, which is kept even toward the bitterest enemies, ought all the more to be preserved toward friends — but not among these men, who have taken it for the finest thing to profit by any means whatsoever, and hold that injustice brings no penalty, so long as profit can be had. There remains, then, a question for you: whether the unjust ought to be punished — a thing God himself wishes and always commands, that insolence and injustice be hated — and this when we go out to a war that is not only just but necessary.

For what is agreed to be most lawless among both Greeks and barbarians, they have done to our envoys, slaughtering them — though the Greeks say their heralds are sacred and inviolable, and we have learned the finest of our teachings and the holiest of our laws through messengers sent by God. For it is this very name that brings God into the sight of men and has power to reconcile enemies to enemies. What greater impiety, then, could there be than to kill envoys who speak on behalf of justice?

How could such men, after doing such things, ever again enjoy stability in their lives or success in war? To me they seem altogether unable to. Perhaps, then, holiness and justice are on our side, but they may claim greater courage or greater numbers. But it is unworthy of you even to say this — for where justice is, God is with it, and where God is present, both numbers and courage are present as well.

But let us also examine our own record. We won the first battle; when they engaged us a second time, they could not even withstand us, but fled at once, unable to bear our onset and our spirit. And when we were winning, Athenion attacked us, waging an unheralded war. Is this courage on their part, or a second act of lawlessness and ambush?

Why then should we think any less of ourselves, when we ought rather to have greater hopes? How could we be terrified of men who, whenever they fight honestly, are always beaten, and who, whenever they are thought to prevail, do so only through injustice? And even if one supposes them noble, should this not spur us on all the more? For true courage lies not in attacking the weaker, but in being able to overcome even the stronger.

And if anyone is dismayed by our own misfortunes and by what happened in the earthquake, let him first consider that this very thing has deceived the Arabs too, who have taken what happened to be greater than it really was; and next, that it would not be fitting for the same event to produce boldness in them and cowardice in us. For their courage springs not from any strength of their own, but from the hope that we are already crippled by our misfortunes,

whereas we, by advancing against them, will strip them of their overconfidence and recover for ourselves the courage to fight without further fear. For in truth we have not been so badly damaged, nor — as some suppose — does what has happened show the wrath of God; these things are accidents and sufferings that occur in the course of nature. And if it had been done by God's design, it is clear that it has also ceased by his design, since he is satisfied with what has occurred; for had he wished to wrong us further, he would not have relented.

And that he wishes this war to go forward, and knows it to be just, he has made plain himself: though some perished in the earthquake out in the country, not one of those under arms suffered anything at all, but all of you were preserved — God making it clear that even if you had gone to war with your whole people, together with children and wives, you would have come through without irreparable harm.

Bearing this in mind, and above all that you have God as your protector at every moment, go out against the unjust with righteous courage — men who broke faith with friendship, who show no truce in battle, who are impious toward envoys, and who are always overcome by your valor."

Hearing this, the Jews became far more confident in spirit for the battle. Herod, after offering sacrifices according to custom, quickly gathered his men and led them against the Arabs, crossing the Jordan and encamping near the enemy. He decided to seize a fortress that lay between the two camps, reckoning that in this way he would both gain an advantage in bringing the battle to a swifter conclusion and, should delay prove necessary, would have secured for himself a well-fortified camp.

Since the Arabs had the same idea, a contest arose over the position — first with skirmishing at a distance, then with more men coming to close quarters on both sides, until the Arabs were defeated and withdrew. This at once gave no small encouragement to the Jews.

And considering the enemy's disposition — men who wished to do anything rather than come to battle — he ventured all the more boldly to tear apart their rampart and press up against their camp; forced back by this, they came out in disorder, having lost all eagerness and hope of victory. Nevertheless they came to close quarters, being more numerous and, under the pressure of necessity, driven to boldness,

and a fierce battle took place, with no small numbers falling on both sides, until at last the Arabs turned and fled. There was great slaughter among those in flight, so that they died not only at the hands of the enemy but also became the cause of their own destruction, trampled by their own numbers and disorderly rush and falling upon their own weapons; at any rate, five thousand of them lay dead.

The rest of their number managed to escape into their fortified camp, but had no secure hope of safety, for lack of provisions and especially of water. The Jews, pursuing them, were not strong enough to break in with them, but surrounded the rampart and, keeping watch, barred both those who wished to bring relief from entering and those who wished to flee from leaving. Being in such straits, then, the...

So the Arabs sent envoys to Herod, at first to negotiate terms, and then, since thirst was pressing them hard, to accept any condition whatever and to beg only for their present safety. But Herod would not receive envoys, ransom for the captives, or any other reasonable offer, so bent was he on avenging the crimes they had committed against his people. Driven by necessity, and above all by thirst, they came forward and surrendered themselves to be led away and bound, and in five days four thousand of them were captured in this way. On the sixth day all who remained resolved to sally out and, in the manner of war, engage the enemy, choosing, if they must suffer, to die fighting rather than perish ingloriously a few at a time. Having decided this, they came out of their camp but held out no time at all in the battle, for their souls and bodies were already broken by ill use and had no strength left, though they made a brilliant show of fighting, counting it a gain, in their wretched state, even to die. About seven thousand of them fell in that first engagement. Struck by such a blow, they lost what spirit had remained to them, and, amazed at Herod's generalship in the very disasters he had inflicted, they yielded from then on and proclaimed him champion of their nation. Herod, having formed too high an opinion of himself from these successes, returned home, having gained honor as well through this display of courage.

Everything else, then, had gone well for him, since he had proved himself formidable in every undertaking, but danger now fell upon him as the decision over the whole world was reached, with Antony defeated by Caesar in the battle at Actium. At that time both Herod himself and those around him, enemies and friends alike, gave up his cause for lost, for it was not to be expected that he would escape unpunished after so great a friendship with Antony. His friends therefore despaired of any hope for him, while those who were hostile to him pretended openly to share in his distress but privately nursed a hidden pleasure, expecting to profit from the change of fortune. Herod himself, seeing that Hyrcanus was the only man of royal rank left, thought it in his interest no longer to leave him in his way: if he himself should come through safely and escape the danger, he judged it safer that no man more worthy of the throne be waiting in ambush for such a crisis as his; but if he should suffer some harm at Caesar's hands, he was eager, out of jealousy, to remove the one man who would then be left to obtain the kingdom.

While Herod was turning this over in his mind, an opening was given him by the others as well. Hyrcanus, being a man of mild character, did not think it right, either then or at any other time, to meddle in affairs or to grasp at anything new, but yielded to fortune and was content to accept whatever it brought about. But Alexandra was contentious, and, carried away without restraint by the hope of a change of fortune, she kept urging her father not to wait indefinitely for Herod's lawlessness to fall upon their house, but to forestall it by securing their future hopes in advance. She pressed him to write on the matter to Malchus, who held the office of Arabarch, asking him to receive Hyrcanus and keep him in safety, since if they withdrew and matters concerning Herod turned out as was likely, given his enmity with Caesar, they alone would be left to recover the throne, both because of their lineage and because of the goodwill of the people.

Although she urged this, Hyrcanus rejected her words at first, but since she was possessed by a kind of stubborn, womanish passion and would not let the matter rest by night or day, but was forever speaking of these things and of Herod's plot against them, he was at last persuaded to give a letter to a certain Dositheus, one of his friends, in which he had arranged for the Arab to send horsemen to receive him and escort him to the Sea of Asphaltitis, which lies three hundred stades from the borders of Jerusalem. He trusted Dositheus because the man was in attendance on him and on Alexandra, and had no small grievance against Herod: he was a kinsman of Joseph, whom Herod had put to death, and a brother of those killed at Tyre earlier by Antony.

Yet none of this induced Dositheus to remain faithful to Hyrcanus in this service; instead, preferring the hopes to be had from the reigning king over those of Hyrcanus, he handed the letter over to Herod. Herod, welcoming this show of loyalty, urged him to render one further service: to fold the letter, seal it, and deliver it to Malchus, and then to bring back whatever reply he received, since it mattered a great deal to know Malchus's own intentions.

Dositheus carried this out eagerly, and the Arab wrote back that he would receive Hyrcanus and all who were with him, and all the Jews who shared his views, and that he would send a force to bring them safely to him, and that Hyrcanus would lack nothing he might require. When Herod received this letter too, he at once summoned Hyrcanus and questioned him about the agreement he had made with Malchus. Hyrcanus denied it, but Herod showed the letters to the council and had the man put to death.

This is the account we give, as it is preserved in the memoirs of King Herod. But other writers do not agree with it in these particulars; they hold that Herod did not put Hyrcanus to death on such grounds, but rather brought the charge against him out of a plot devised in his own manner. For they write it this way: that at a certain banquet, giving no hint of suspicion, Herod put a question to Hyrcanus, asking whether he had received any letters from Malchus; and Hyrcanus admitted that he had received letters of greeting, and when asked further whether he had also received any gift, he replied that he had received nothing more than four riding animals sent to him. Herod, they say, twisted this into a charge of bribery and treason and ordered the man strangled. As evidence that he met such an end though guilty of nothing, they cite the mildness of his character, and the fact that he had shown no sign of rashness or impetuosity either in his youth or when he himself held the kingship, but even then had handed over most of the administration of affairs to Antipater. At that time, moreover, he was more than eighty years old, and he knew that Herod's power was now secure in every way; he had even crossed the Euphrates, leaving behind those on the far side who honored him, as though he meant to belong wholly to Herod from then on. It was, they argue, altogether implausible that a man of his nature would undertake anything or lay hold of any innovation, and that this charge was merely a pretext contrived by Herod.

Such, then, was the end that befell Hyrcanus, a man who experienced many and varied turns of fortune in the course of his life. At the very outset, while his mother Alexandra was queen, he was made high priest of the Jewish nation and held that honor for nine years. When he succeeded to the throne after his mother's death, he held it for only three months before he was driven out by his brother Aristobulus, and was afterward restored by Pompey, recovering all his honors, in which he continued for forty years. Deprived of them a second time by Antigonus and mutilated in body, he was taken captive by the Parthians. From there he returned home in due course, drawn by the hopes held out to him by Herod, none of which came to pass as he expected, so full of suffering was his life; and, most grievous of all, as we have already said, in his old age he met an end he did not deserve. For he seems in every way to have been a fair and moderate man, content to let most of the government be conducted by his ministers, being neither meddlesome nor skilled in the direction of a kingdom; and it was through his mildness that Antipater and Herod were able to advance to the position they reached, yet in the end they found from him no reward either just or pious for such an end as this.

When Herod had thus removed Hyrcanus from his path, he hastened to meet Caesar, unable to hope for anything good regarding his own position from the friendship he had had with Antony. He held Alexandra under suspicion, fearing that she might seize the opportunity to stir up the people to revolt and throw the affairs of the kingdom into turmoil. He therefore entrusted everything to his brother Pheroras, and settled his mother Cypros and his sister and his whole family at Masada, instructing them, if they should hear anything untoward concerning him, to hold fast to their position. As for his wife Mariamme, since it was not possible, given the ill feeling between her and his sister and mother, for her to share the same household with them, he settled her at Alexandreion together with her mother Alexandra, leaving Joseph the treasurer and Soaemus the Ituraean in charge of them there. These men had from the start been most loyal to him, and were now left, ostensibly to guard the women out of honor to them. But they had also received a secret order: if they should learn anything untoward concerning him, to make away with both women at once, and to preserve the kingdom, so far as lay in their power, for his children together with his brother Pheroras.

Having given these instructions, he himself hastened to Rhodes to meet Caesar. When he had sailed into the city, though he had laid aside his diadem, he yielded nothing of the rest of his dignity, and when he was granted an audience in the course of their meeting, he displayed all the more clearly the greatness of his spirit. He turned neither to entreaty, as might have been expected of one in such a position, nor did he offer any plea as a man who had done wrong, but gave an account of his actions without any attempt to minimize them.

He told Caesar that he had indeed enjoyed the greatest friendship with Antony, and had done everything within his power to see the outcome fall in Antony's favor, though he had not personally taken part in the campaign against the Arabs, but had instead sent him money and grain. Even this, he said, was less than what was owed by him; for a man who acknowledged himself a friend, and who knew Antony to be his benefactor, ought to have risked his whole self, in soul and body and possessions, on his behalf, in ways he himself had fallen short of doing as he should have. Yet, he said, he could take this much comfort in his own conduct, that he had not abandoned Antony after his defeat at Actium, nor gone over with his hopes to the winning side once fortune had plainly begun to shift; instead, he had kept himself, if not a worthy ally in arms, at least the most loyal counselor he could be to Antony, pointing out to him the one course by which he might still be saved and not fall from power altogether — to put Cleopatra to death; for with her removed, it would have been open to him both to rule his own affairs and more easily to reach an accommodation with Caesar in place of hostility. But Antony, giving no thought to any of this, chose folly, to his own ruin but to Caesar's advantage. "Now, therefore," he said, "if you judge my zeal by your anger at Antony, I will not deny what I have done, nor will I refuse to declare my goodwill toward him openly. But if you set the person aside and ask instead who I am toward my benefactors and what sort of friend I prove to be, you will be able to know us by the experience of what has already occurred; for though the name may change, the constancy of the friendship itself will be no less able to prove its worth in us."

By speaking in this way, and showing throughout the free and noble bearing of his spirit, he won no small hold over Caesar, who was himself a man of high ambition and magnanimity, so that the very charges brought against him now became grounds for building goodwill toward him. Caesar restored the diadem to him and, encouraging him to show himself no less devoted than he had formerly been toward Antony, held him thereafter in every honor, adding that Quintus Didius had written to him that Herod had given his full support, with every eagerness, in the affair of the gladiators. Held in such high regard, and seeing his kingdom, beyond all expectation, established once more on firmer ground than before, by the gift of Caesar and the decree of the Roman people, which Caesar had arranged for him to secure that stability, he escorted Caesar as far as Egypt, bestowing gifts beyond his means both on Caesar himself and on his friends, and displaying every kind of magnanimity.

He also asked, on behalf of one of Antony's intimate friends, that Alexander be spared any irreversible harm, but did not obtain this, since Caesar was already bound by an oath. He then returned to Judea with greater honor and confidence than before, and gave those who had expected the opposite outcome cause for astonishment, since he always seemed, by the favor of God, to come away from danger with even greater brilliance. Soon after this he was occupied with receiving Caesar, who was about to cross from Syria into Egypt. When Caesar arrived, Herod received him at Ptolemais with every mark of royal attendance, and furnished the army too with entertainment and abundance of provisions. He was ranked among Caesar's most devoted supporters, riding alongside him as he drew up his forces, and entertaining him and his friends, one hundred and fifty in number, all served in a manner of great expense and luxury.

He also supplied, to those crossing the waterless region, whatever provisions were urgently needed, so that neither wine nor water — the latter being in even greater demand among the soldiers — ran short. Caesar himself he presented with eight hundred talents, and gave everyone occasion to reflect that the resources he displayed in these services were far greater and more splendid than the kingdom he actually possessed. This did all the more to establish confidence in his goodwill and zeal, and he gained the greatest benefit from the needs of the moment by matching them with his own magnanimity. And when the leading men were returning again from Egypt, he showed himself inferior to none of them in the services he rendered.

At that time, however, once he was back in his kingdom, he found his household in turmoil, and his wife Mariamme and her mother Alexandra in a state of deep resentment. They believed — and their suspicion was not unfounded — that they had been placed in that stronghold not for the safety of their persons but, under guard, so that they might have no power over anything, not even over themselves, and they bore this bitterly. Mariamme, for her part, took the king's love for her to be nothing but pretense and a deception practiced for his own advantage, and she was distressed that, even if some harm should befall him, he had left her no hope of surviving on his account, recalling the orders that had been given to Joseph. So already she was working through flattery on the guards, and especially on Soaemus, since she perceived that everything lay in his hands. Soaemus, at first, was faithful, holding back nothing of what Herod had entrusted to him; but, worn down little by little through the words and gifts with which the women lavishly courted him more assiduously than he could resist, he at last disclosed every one of the king's instructions, above all because he did not expect Herod to return to the same position of power again; and in doing so he supposed he would gain no small favor with the women, who were likely, either as queens or as close kin to the king, not to fail of the standing they still held, but to have all the more reason to reward him if they should come to reign, or come near to the one who reigned. He was also encouraged in this hope

and would be no less unwilling, even if Herod returned having managed everything to his own satisfaction, to refuse his wife anything she wanted; for he knew that the king's love for Mariamme went beyond words. Mariamme was distressed to hear that these instructions had leaked out, seeing that there would be no end to the dangers she faced from Herod, and she was greatly troubled, praying not that she would meet with the same fate as the others, but judging that a life spent with him, if it came to that, would be unbearable.

She showed this later without concealing anything of what she felt. For when Herod, having succeeded in the great matters he had, beyond hope, brought off, sailed back and, as was natural, first brought the good news to his wife, singling her out above everyone else because of his love and their long intimacy, and greeted her warmly, she neither rejoiced at his account of his good fortune nor could conceal her feelings. Instead, out of a sense of her own degradation and abiding nobility, she groaned at his embraces and made it plain that his stories vexed her more than they pleased her, so that it became not merely suspicious but obvious, and it disturbed Herod. He was distressed to see his wife's inexplicable hatred of him showing so openly, and he was troubled by the whole affair; unable to bear his love for her, he could not settle either into anger or reconciliation, but kept passing from one to the other, and found himself in great perplexity over both. Caught in this way between hatred and affection, and often ready to punish her arrogance, because his soul had already been captured he grew too weak to remove the woman. In sum, he would gladly have punished her, yet he feared that in doing so he would unwittingly exact from himself, by her death, a greater penalty than hers.

His sister and his mother, seeing him disposed in this way toward Mariamme, thought this the best opportunity to bring their hatred of her to bear, and talked a great deal, provoking Herod with slanders capable of stirring up both hatred and jealousy at once. He did not receive such talk unwillingly, yet he did not feel confident enough, believing what he heard, to act against his wife; still, he grew ever worse disposed toward her, and their mutual passion kept rekindling itself, she not concealing her feelings and he always turning his love into anger. And some fatal act would have been done at once, had not news then arrived that Caesar was victorious in the war and that, with Antony and Cleopatra dead, he now held Egypt; hastening to meet Caesar, Herod left matters at home as they stood. As he was leaving, Mariamme came to see Soaemus off, acknowledged with much gratitude the care he had shown, and asked the king to grant him a district to govern. And he obtained this honor.

Herod, once in Egypt, met with Caesar with greater freedom of speech, now as a friend, and was honored most highly; for Caesar gave him the four hundred Galatians who had served as Cleopatra's bodyguard, and restored to him the territory that had been taken from him because of her. He also added to his kingdom Gadara, Hippos, and Samaria, and, on the coast, Gaza, Anthedon, Jaffa, and Strato's Tower.

Having achieved even this, he grew still more distinguished; he escorted Caesar as far as Antioch and then returned, and to the same degree that his outward circumstances seemed to him to be conducing to his happiness, to that same degree he suffered within his own household, and above all in his marriage, where he had earlier seemed most fortunate of all. For he had conceived a passion for Mariamme as great as any recorded in history, together with a just regard for her.

She, in most respects, was chaste and faithful to him, but she had by nature a certain harshness mixed with her womanly qualities. Since he was enslaved to his desire for her and allowed her to reign and rule over him, without reckoning this into account for the times, she often treated him insolently; and this he bore with self-control and even generosity, pretending not to notice. But openly she mocked her mother-in-law and sister-in-law for their low birth and spoke ill of them, so that there was already faction and irreconcilable hatred among the women, and at that time even greater slanders. The suspicion, nursed along, lasted the length of a year from the time Herod returned from Caesar. But what had long been brewing finally broke out from the following occasion.

The king lay down to rest at midday and, out of the affection he always felt for her, summoned Mariamme. She came in, but did not lie down with him; instead she scorned him and, as he pressed her, reviled him further, saying that he had killed her father and her brother. He bore this insult badly and was on the verge of some rash act, when Salome, the king's sister, noticing his deepening agitation, sent in the cupbearer, who had long been prepared for this, instructing him to say that Mariamme had persuaded him to prepare a love-potion for her to use on the king. If the king grew alarmed and asked what this meant, he was to say that she had a drug which she had urged him to administer, and that if he showed no interest in the love-potion, he should let the matter drop, since it posed no danger to him. Having coached him in this, she sent him in at that very moment to speak with the king.

He came in persuasively and with apparent urgency, saying that Mariamme had given him gifts and was trying to persuade him to give the king a love-potion. When Herod was disturbed by this and asked what the potion was, he said it was a drug given him by her, whose power he himself did not know, and that for this reason he thought it safer to report it, both for his own sake and the king's. Hearing such words, Herod, already ill-disposed toward her, grew still more provoked, and had the eunuch, who was most trusted by Mariamme, tortured concerning the drug, knowing that nothing, great or small, could be done without his knowledge. The man, under duress, had nothing to say of the matter for which he was tortured, but he did say that the woman's hatred toward the king had arisen because of things Soaemus had told her.

While he was still speaking this, the king cried out loudly that Soaemus, who had been most loyal to him and his kingdom in every other respect, would never have betrayed his orders unless he had also gone further, into intimacy with Mariamme. He at once ordered Soaemus seized and put to death. As for his wife, he handed the judgment over to a court, gathering his closest associates and pressing the accusation with great vehemence concerning the alleged love-potions and drugs. He was unrestrained in his speech and more prone to anger than to fair judgment, and in the end, seeing him in this state, those present condemned her to death.

Once the verdict was passed, some such thought also arose in him, and in some of those present, that she should not be put to death so precipitately, but rather confined in one of the kingdom's fortresses. But Salome's faction pressed hard to have the woman put out of the way, and persuaded the king, warning him to guard against the disturbances of the populace should she happen to remain alive. And so Mariamme was led away to her death.

Alexandra, observing the moment, and realizing that she had little hope of escaping a similar fate at Herod's hands, changed her attitude in a manner utterly contrary to her earlier boldness, and quite unbecoming. Wishing to make clear her ignorance of the charges her daughter faced, she rushed forward and, reviling her own daughter in front of everyone, cried out that she had been wicked and ungrateful to her husband and deserved to suffer such things for having dared to do them; for she had not repaid as she ought the benefactor of them all.

While she was play-acting in this shameless way, even daring to lay hold of her daughter's hair, there was, as one would expect, much condemnation from the onlookers of her unseemly pretense; but it showed itself even more clearly in the woman about to die herself. For Mariamme neither answered a word from the start nor, disturbed by her mother's ill grace, so much as glanced at her, but by her bearing made plain that she was troubled far more by her mother's shamelessly displayed misconduct than by her own peril. She herself went to her death with unshaken composure and unchanged color, revealing her nobility to those watching even in her final moments.

And so she died, a woman outstanding both in self-mastery and in greatness of spirit; but she lacked fair-mindedness, and there was more of a contentious streak in her nature. In beauty of body and in the dignity of her bearing in company she surpassed the women of her time by far, and this gave her the greater occasion for failing to live so as to please the king or for her own pleasure; for, being courted because of his love, and expecting nothing untoward from him, she indulged in an unmeasured freedom of speech. She was also vexed on account of her own family, and thought it right to tell Herod everything she had suffered, and in the end she succeeded in making his mother and sister her enemies, and even the king himself, the one man on whom alone she had relied not to suffer anything unpleasant.

Once she was put to death, the king's desire for her only blazed up the more, he being disposed as we described earlier; for the love he had for her was not the ordinary sort born of familiarity, but had begun from the first as something like frenzy, and had not been overcome by the license of their life together into growing any less. Then indeed it seemed, as if in some vengeance for Mariamme's destruction, to fasten upon him all the more; he often called out for her, and often gave way to unseemly lamentation, and devised everything he could to distract himself, arranging drinking parties and gatherings, but none of it was enough.

He therefore neglected the administration of the kingdom's affairs, and was so overcome by his passion that he actually ordered his servants to summon Mariamme, as though she were still alive and able to answer. While he was in this state a plague broke out, which destroyed most of the common people and the most honored of his friends, and gave everyone occasion to suspect that this had come about through divine wrath for the lawless act committed against Mariamme. This too weighed further upon the king, and in the end, giving himself over to the wilderness, and under pretext of hunting parties wandering there in his distress, he did not last many days before falling into a most severe illness: an inflammation, together with

a pain at the back of the head, and a derangement of the mind. None of the treatments applied did any good, but rather, working against him, brought him near despair. All the physicians who attended him, since none of the remedies they administered had any effect on the disease, and since the king could do nothing but follow whatever his illness compelled, allowed him whatever he demanded, entrusting to fortune the slim hope of recovery that lay in his choice of regimen. And so he was nursed in this fashion in Samaria, which had been renamed Sebaste.

Meanwhile Alexandra, residing in Jerusalem and learning of his condition, was eager to gain control of the fortresses around the city. There were two of them, one belonging to the city itself, the other to the Temple, and whoever held these had the whole nation in their power; for the sacrifices could not be performed without them, and no Jew could be brought to give up performing these more readily than to give up life itself, or the worship they were accustomed to render to God. Alexandra therefore made her approach to those in command of these garrisons,

arguing that it was proper for them to hand over control to her and to Herod's children, so that no one else might seize power before someone else forestalled it, in the event of his death; for should he recover, no one would guard the interests of his family more securely than his own closest kin. They did not take her words kindly; being loyal men, and having been so throughout the earlier period, they remained all the more so at that time, both out of hatred for Alexandra and because they considered it not even lawful to give up on Herod while he still lived.

For they had long been his friends, one of them being even the king's own cousin, Achiabus. They therefore sent at once and reported Alexandra's design to him. He, without any delay, ordered her put to death; but he himself, having barely and with great suffering survived his illness, was harsh in spirit and body alike, worn down as he was, prone to displeasure, and ready on every pretext to inflict punishment on those who fell into his hands.

He put to death even his closest friends, Costobarus and Lysimachus, and the man called Antipater of Gadara, and also Dositheus, for the following reason. Costobarus was by birth an Idumaean, of the first rank among his people, whose ancestors had served as priests of Koze, a god the Idumaeans worship.

When Hyrcanus had converted their political constitution to Jewish customs and laws, Herod, upon taking over the kingdom, appointed Costobarus governor of Idumaea and Gaza, and gave him his sister Salome in marriage, having put to death Joseph, who had previously married her, as we have related. Costobarus, having gained this good fortune gladly and beyond his expectation, was carried away by his success and gradually overstepped his bounds, thinking it neither honorable for himself to obey Herod's commands as his ruler, nor right that the Idumaeans, who had adopted Jewish customs, should remain subject to the Jews.

He therefore sent word to Cleopatra of Idumaea, claiming that he had always been descended from her ancestors, and that it was therefore just for him to ask Antony for the territory; for he himself was ready to transfer his loyalty to her. He did this not out of any greater regard for Cleopatra's rule, but because, if Herod were stripped of the greater part of his kingdom, he thought it would then be easy for him to rule over the Idumaean nation on his own account, and to achieve even greater things; for his ambitions ranged far, having no small resources of birth and of wealth, which he had amassed through continual dishonest gain, and he contemplated nothing modest. Cleopatra, however, having asked Antony for this territory, failed to obtain it. Word of these dealings reached Herod,

and though he was ready to put Costobarus to death, still, at the entreaty of his sister and his mother, he let him go and thought him worthy of pardon, though he did not thereafter regard him as free of suspicion for what he had attempted at that time. Some time later it happened that Salome quarreled with Costobarus, and she at once sent him a bill of divorce, dissolving the marriage, though this was not in accordance with Jewish law;

Among us it is permitted for a man to do this, but a woman may not, even once separated from her husband, marry another on her own authority unless her former husband consents. Salome, however, chose not the law of her own people but the law that came from power: she renounced the marriage on her own initiative and told her brother Herod that she was leaving her husband out of goodwill toward him, since she had learned that Costobarus, together with Antipater, Lysimachus, and Dositheus, was aiming at revolution.

As proof of her word she offered the sons of Sabba, who, she said, had been kept alive by him for the past twelve years already. This was in fact true, and it struck the king with great astonishment, coming as it did against all expectation; he was all the more disturbed by the strangeness of the report. The case of the sons of Sabba was one he had earlier been eager to pursue, treating them as enemies by disposition, but by then, through the long passage of time, it had faded even from memory.

The hostility and hatred toward them had arisen in the following way. While Antigonus held the kingship, Herod was besieging the city of Jerusalem with his forces, and under the pressure of the hardships that beset those under siege, more and more of the besieged were calling for Herod and inclining their hopes toward him. But the sons of Sabba, men of standing and influence with the populace, remained loyal to Antigonus throughout, continually slandering Herod and urging that the kingship be kept, in accordance with descent, for the ruling family. This was the policy they pursued, believing at the same time that it served their own advantage. When the city was captured and Herod had gained control of affairs, Costobarus, who had been appointed to block the exits and guard the city so that none of the citizens who owed debts, or who worked against the king's interests, might slip away, and who knew that the sons of Sabba were held in high regard and honor by the whole populace, judged that their preservation would count for much toward him in the event of a change of fortune. He therefore hid them away and concealed them on his own estates.

For the time being he satisfied Herod, since a suspicion of the truth had gotten about, by swearing an oath that he knew nothing of their whereabouts, and was thereby cleared of suspicion. But afterward, when the king issued proclamations and offered rewards for information and devised every means of search, Costobarus still did not come to confess, but having once denied it, he was convinced that being caught with the men discovered would cost him no less than it already had, and so, out of both goodwill and now necessity, he persisted in keeping them hidden. When word of this was brought to the king through his sister, he sent men to the places where they were reported to be staying and put both them and their accomplices to death, so that nothing was left of Hyrcanus's kindred, and the kingship became wholly his own, with no man of standing left to stand in the way of his lawless acts.

For this reason he departed still further from the customs of his ancestors, and through foreign practices he undermined the ancient order of things, which had until then remained untouched — and from this we have suffered no small harm even down to our own time, through the neglect of all that had formerly led the people toward piety. First of all he established a contest of athletic games held every five years in honor of Caesar, and he built a theater in Jerusalem, and after that a very great amphitheater on the plain, both magnificent in their expense but foreign to Jewish custom, since the use and display of such spectacles is not part of our tradition.

He nevertheless made the celebration of this five-yearly festival most splendid, announcing it to the surrounding nations and summoning participants from every people. Athletes and the rest of the competitors were called from every land, drawn by hope of the prizes offered and by the glory of victory, and the foremost men in every discipline gathered there; for he offered the greatest of prizes not only to those who trained in gymnastic contests, but also to those engaged in music and to the so-called performers on the stage, and great pains were taken that all the most distinguished men should come to compete. He also offered no small rewards for four-horse chariots, two-horse chariots, and single riders, and he imitated everything that anywhere was pursued with lavish expense or solemn splendor, out of rivalry to make the display renowned for himself. The theater itself was ringed about with inscriptions concerning Caesar, and with trophies of the nations he had won in war, all of them made of refined gold and silver for him. And as for the equipment used, there was nothing so costly, whether of clothing or of jeweled ornament, that was not put on display together with the contests to be seen.

Provision was also made for wild beasts — a great many lions were gathered for him, along with other animals of exceptional strength or of a rarer kind — and combats were arranged between the beasts themselves and against condemned men thrown to fight them. To foreigners this was at once astonishing for its expense and a source of thrilling entertainment in the dangers of the spectacle, but to the people of the land it was a plain overthrow of the customs they held in honor. It appeared, from the outset, an act of impiety to throw men to wild beasts for the pleasure of an audience of men, and no less impious to exchange their ancestral customs for foreign practices. But what grieved them more than anything were the trophies: believing that these were images encased in armor — since it was not their ancestral custom to venerate such things — they were greatly displeased.

Nor did their agitation escape Herod's notice. He thought it untimely to use force, and so he tried, in private conversation, to soothe some of them and free them from their superstitious fear. He did not, however, persuade them; instead, out of resentment at what they thought he was doing wrong, they cried out with one voice that even if everything else might be tolerable, they could not endure images of men set up in the city — meaning the trophies — for that, they said, was not their ancestral custom. Herod, seeing them so disturbed and unlikely to be easily won over unless given some reassurance, summoned the most eminent among them, brought them into the theater, and, pointing to the trophies, asked what exactly they supposed these things to be. When they cried out, "Images of men," he ordered the outer trappings stripped away and showed them the bare wood beneath. As soon as they were stripped of their coverings, the objects became a source of laughter, and this did much to dissolve the derision the people had already directed, even before this, at the manufacture of such statues.

Having in this way outmaneuvered the crowd and dissolved the impulse of anger they had felt, most of them changed their minds and were no longer indignant; but some persisted in their resentment of these practices so foreign to custom, and, holding that the overthrow of ancestral traditions was the beginning of great evils, they judged it a righteous risk to run rather than seem to look on passively while Herod, altering their way of life by force, introduced customs foreign to it — a man who was king in name but who, in fact, showed himself an enemy of the whole nation. As a result, ten citizens bound themselves by oath to undertake every risk, hiding daggers under their cloaks; among their number, sworn along with them, was a blind man, who had joined out of indignation at what he had heard done and at his own loss of sight — not that he was capable of any active part in carrying out the attempt, but he placed himself in readiness to suffer whatever befell the others, so that his presence might make the impulse of the conspirators no less determined on his account. Once resolved on this, they went by a signal into the theater, hoping that Herod himself would not escape them if they fell on him unseen, and believing that even if they failed to reach him, they would kill many of those around him — and that this alone would be enough, even should they themselves die, to bring home to the king and to that whole people the outrages they thought he was committing.

They stood ready, then, in such eagerness beforehand; but one of the men Herod had appointed to look into and report such matters had discovered the whole plot, and denounced it to the king just as he was about to enter the theater. Herod, thinking the report not implausible — bearing in mind the hatred he knew many bore him, as well as the disturbances that kept arising over each new measure — withdrew to the palace and summoned by name the men under suspicion. When his attendants fell upon them, they knew at once they could not escape, being caught in the act; but they adorned the necessary end of their fate by yielding nothing of their resolve. Without shame and without denying the deed, they displayed the daggers already seized from them, and declared that the conspiracy had been formed honorably and with piety — not for the sake of any gain or any private grievance, but above all for the sake of the common customs, which it was right for all either to preserve or to die for beforehand.

Having thus spoken out boldly in defense of their undertaking, they were led away by the king's men who surrounded them, and after enduring every torment, they perished. Not long afterward, some men, out of hatred, seized the informer who had exposed them and not only killed him but cut him limb from limb and threw him to the dogs. Though many of the citizens witnessed what was done, no one denounced them, until Herod, making the investigation harsher and more relentless, had certain women put to torture, and they confessed what they had seen done. The men responsible for the act were punished, their entire households included, as Herod pursued their recklessness; but the persistence of this hostility, and the unshakable loyalty to the laws that lay behind it, made Herod uneasy unless he could secure his rule with complete safety. He therefore resolved to surround the populace from every side, so that no uprising, should any occur, could go undetected.

To this end the city itself was already fortified for him by the citadel in which he resided, and the Temple by the strength of the fortress called Antonia, built by him nearby; as a third stronghold against the whole people, he conceived of Samaria, which he named Sebaste, believing that it would strengthen his hold over the country no less, since it lay a single day's journey from Jerusalem and would be useful and serviceable both to those in the city and to those in the countryside. For the whole nation he also built a fortress at the place once called Strato's Tower, renamed Caesarea by him. And in the great plain he set apart land for his elite cavalry and founded there a settlement called Gaba, and in Perea one called Esebonitis. In these and other particular measures he was constantly devising something further for his security, dividing the whole nation under garrisons so that it might least of all fall into disorder through its own freedom of action — disorders which even the smallest disturbance, once begun, regularly gave rise to — and so that, should anyone stir up trouble, it would not escape notice, since men were always stationed nearby who could both perceive it and prevent it.

At that time, having set his mind on fortifying Samaria, he made a practice of settling there many of those who had fought alongside him in his wars, as well as many of the neighboring peoples, both out of ambition to raise up something new — since the place had not previously been counted among the notable cities — and, still more, because his ambition here served his own security. He changed its name, calling it Sebaste, and he distributed the best of the surrounding land among the settlers, so that they might live in prosperity from the very outset; and he surrounded the city with a strong wall, using the steepness of the site to increase its defensive strength, and giving it a size not like its former one but such that it fell short of none of the most celebrated cities — for its circuit measured twenty stadia. Within it, at its center, he laid out a sacred precinct of three and a half stadia, adorned in every way, and in it he raised a temple that in size and beauty rivaled the most celebrated of temples; and in its several parts he adorned the city throughout, seeing to what was necessary for security by making it, through the strength of its enclosing walls, a fortress serving a greater purpose, while attending also to its outward beauty, since it suited his love of splendor and his wish to leave behind, for later times, monuments of his generosity.

In this year, the thirteenth of Herod's reign, the greatest calamities befell the land, whether because God was angered or because the evil came about in the natural course of recurring cycles. First there were unbroken droughts, so that the earth, being barren, produced nothing of what it should have; and then, as the people's way of life was disrupted by the shortage of grain, bodily illnesses set in and a plague-like affliction took hold, the two evils continually feeding one another. For the lack of medical care and of food made the pestilential disease, once it had begun to rage, all the worse, and the destruction wrought among those perishing in this way stripped even the survivors of their courage, since they were unable to provide for their own wants through any care of their own. And with the year's crops destroyed, and whatever had earlier been stored away now used up, nothing was left to give ground for good hope, since the evil, as far as one could judge, was only intensifying, and not merely for that one year — so that they were left with nothing in reserve, and even the seed grain that had survived was lost, the earth failing to yield even a second time. Necessity forced many innovations to meet these needs.

The king himself found his own resources no less strained, since he had been deprived of the revenues he drew from the land and had spent his money lavishly on the cities he was improving. There seemed nothing that could offer any relief, given how far the calamity had already taken hold, together with the hatred his subjects bore him — for ill fortune is always quick to find fault with those in power. In such circumstances he considered how to meet the crisis. It was difficult, since even those nearby who had grain had none to sell, having suffered no less themselves, and money was lacking as well, even if it had been possible to acquire a little at the cost of much. Yet, judging it right in every way not to neglect the relief effort, he broke up the ornamentation kept in his own palace, made of silver and gold, sparing neither the fine workmanship of its craftsmanship nor whatever else was costly by art. He sent the proceeds to Egypt, since Petronius now held that province from Caesar. Petronius, with no small number of people having taken refuge with him for the same needs, being besides a personal friend of Herod's and wishing to see those under him preserved, gave Herod's men first right to export grain, and assisted him in every way with the purchase and shipment, so that this relief effort proved to be either the greater part, or the whole, of what was accomplished. For Herod, once these supplies arrived, added to them his own personal attention, and thereby not only won over the minds of those who had before been ill-disposed toward him, but made the greatest display of his goodwill and care for his people. First of all,

He assigned to as many as could manage it themselves the task of preparing their own food, and made a most exact distribution of the grain. Since many were unable, through old age or some other infirmity, to prepare their food for themselves, he took care of them too, setting up bakers and supplying them with bread ready made. He also took care that they should not pass the winter in danger, now that a shortage of clothing had struck as well, since the flocks had perished and been entirely used up, so that there was no wool to be had nor any other material for covering. When he had procured this for them too, he turned to bestowing benefits on the neighboring cities, distributing seed to the people of Syria. This service proved no less useful to him than the grain, since his generosity was so well aimed at producing abundance that everyone had enough food. In sum, when the harvest showed itself over the land, he sent out to the country not less than fifty thousand people whom he himself had fed and kept alive, and in this way, having restored his kingdom, afflicted as it was, with the utmost zeal and diligence, he relieved no less the surrounding peoples who were suffering the same hardships. For there was no one who came to him in need who went away without securing help suited to his situation. Indeed peoples and cities, and such private individuals as found themselves in want because they had many dependents, took refuge with him and obtained what they asked, so that, by calculation, the total quantity of grain given to those outside his realm came to ten thousand cors—a cor holding ten Attic medimni—while that given within the kingdom itself came to about eighty thousand. This care of his, and the timeliness of his generosity, had such an effect, both among the Jews themselves and in reports spread among others, that the old hatred stirred up by his tampering with some of their customs was banished from his kingdom and from the whole nation, and in its place appeared, as a kind of exchange, the outstanding generosity he had shown in relieving the direst distress. He gained fame abroad as well, and it seems that the hardships that befell him proved, beyond expectation, of benefit to him: having ravaged his kingdom, they did him no small service in the matter of his reputation, for by showing, against expectation, a magnanimous spirit in the midst of scarcity, he won over the multitude, so that they came to judge, as though from the beginning, not by the record of his past deeds but by the care he had displayed in a time of need.

Around that time he also sent Caesar an auxiliary force of five hundred picked men from his bodyguard, whom Aelius Gallus led to the Red Sea, and they proved useful to him in many things. Again, then, as his affairs prospered toward increase, he built a palace in the upper city, raising enormous halls and adorning them at very great expense with gold, stone, and paneling, so that each of them could hold great numbers of men reclining at table, and they were named according to their size—one was called Caesar's, the other Agrippa's.

He also acquired a wife, moved by erotic desire, taking no account at all of what was fitting for a life lived for his own pleasure. The beginning of his marriages came about as follows. There was a certain Simon, a Jerusalemite, son of one Boethus of Alexandria, a priest of some standing among the notable men, who had a daughter reputed the most beautiful of the time. When talk of her arose among the people of Jerusalem, Herod at first was stirred merely by hearsay, but when he saw her and was struck by the girl's beauty, he disapproved altogether of resorting to the exercise of sheer power—suspecting, rightly, that this would be denounced as violence and tyranny—and thought it better to take the girl in marriage. Since Simon was of too modest a rank to become kin to him, yet too considerable to be despised, he pursued his desire by the more decent course, raising them both and making them more honored: at once, then, he removed Jesus son of Phiabi from the high priesthood and appointed Simon in his place of honor, and so contracted the alliance with him. When the marriage had been completed,

he also built a fortress on the site where he had defeated the Jews when Antigonus held power after Herod had been driven from his rule. This fortress is about sixty stadia from Jerusalem; it is naturally strong and most suitable for construction, being a hill of fair height, artificially raised so as to be shaped like a breast, ringed about with round towers, and having a steep ascent built up with two hundred polished steps. Within it are luxurious royal apartments, built for security as much as for splendor; around the base of the hill are buildings well worth seeing, in particular for the conveyance of water—for the place itself had none—achieved only after long labor and great expense. The level ground round about is built up as a city no smaller than others, with the hill serving as its acropolis over the rest of the settlement.

With everything having turned out as he had hoped, he had no fear whatsoever of disturbances within his own kingdom, having secured the obedience of his subjects on both counts—through fear, since he was implacable in inflicting punishment, and through care, since he was found magnanimous in reversals of fortune. He surrounded himself with external security as well, treating it, so to speak, as a fortification for his subjects: he dealt skillfully and kindly with cities and cultivated the favor of rulers by the opportunities he gave each of them for benefaction, making his gifts the greater, and having a nature magnanimous in a way well suited to kingship, so that everything of his kept increasing in every respect as his fortunes always advanced further. But because of his ambition in this regard, and the attentions he paid to Caesar and the most powerful of the Romans, he was compelled to depart from his own customs and to corrupt many of his people's laws, out of ambition founding cities and raising temples—not within the land of the Jews, for they would not have tolerated such things, since it is forbidden among us to honor images and figures shaped after the Greek fashion—but he built up the outlying country and the surrounding regions in this way, excusing himself to the Jews on the ground that he did nothing of his own will but by command and order, while to Caesar and the Romans he represented it as gratifying them to a degree that fell not short even of the honor due his own people's customs; in reality, however, he aimed at the whole of it, or rather was ambitious to leave behind greater monuments of his rule for posterity. Hence he also busied himself with the repair of cities and made very great expenditures for this purpose.

Noticing also a place by the sea most suitable for receiving a city, formerly called Strato's Tower, he set about it on a magnificent plan, raising every building not carelessly but out of white stone, and adorning it with the most costly palaces and civic residences; but the greatest and most laborious achievement was a harbor safe from storms, of a size to match the Piraeus, containing berths within it and secondary anchorages, and remarkable for its construction, since the site itself offered nothing suited to so great an undertaking, but it was completed by imported materials and vast expenditure. The city lies in Phoenicia, along the coastal route to Egypt, between Joppa and Dora, small towns on the shore that are hard to put in at because of the exposure to the southwest wind, which continually drags the sand from the sea onto the shore and does not allow landing, so that merchants are generally forced to ride at anchor offshore. Correcting this awkward feature of the place, he marked out the circuit of the harbor to the extent needed for great fleets to ride at anchor by the shore, and let down enormous stones into the depth to twenty fathoms. Most of these were fifty feet in length, not less than eighteen in width, and nine in depth—some larger, some smaller. The foundation, so far as it went, was laid out to two hundred feet against the sea. Half of this was set forward to break the waves, so that the surge, broken there, would be repelled—hence it was called the breakwater—while the rest carried a stone wall broken by towers, the largest of which is named Drusion, a very fine structure indeed, taking its name from Drusus, Caesar's stepson, who died young. Continuous vaulted chambers had been built to receive sailors, and before them a broad landing quay ran round in a circle, crowning the whole harbor, a most pleasant place to walk for those who wished it. The entrance and the mouth of the harbor were made to face north, the clearest quarter of the winds. At the base of the whole enclosure, on the left as one sails in, stands a tower firmly founded to hold out for a long time, and on the right two great stones, larger than the tower on the other side, standing upright and joined together. Round about the harbor in a circle are continuous dwellings built of the smoothest stone, and in the middle a certain rise, on which stands a temple of Caesar, visible far out to those sailing in, containing a statue of Roma and one of Caesar; and the city itself is called Caesarea, having obtained the finest material and construction. The parts beneath the city—sewers and passages—involve no less labor than the buildings above; some of these run at regular intervals to the harbor and the sea, while one runs crosswise and girds them all, so that rainwater and the refuse of the inhabitants are easily carried off together, and the sea, when it presses in from outside, flows through and washes out the whole city. He also built in it a theater, and behind the southern part of the harbor an amphitheater capable of holding a great crowd of people, positioned conveniently to look out over the sea. The city was thus completed in twelve years, the king never flagging in the labor nor falling short in the expense.

While engaged in such matters, and with Sebaste now already a city, he decided to send his sons Alexander and Aristobulus to Rome, to meet with Caesar. When they arrived there, their lodging was the house of Pollio, a man among those most devoted to friendship with Herod, but they were also permitted to lodge among Caesar's own household; for Caesar received the boys with every kindness, and granted Herod the right to settle the kingdom on whichever of his sons he wished, and further gave him the territory of Trachonitis, Batanea, and Auranitis—granting it for the following reason. A certain Zenodorus had leased the estate of Lysanias. Since the revenues did not suffice for him, he drew a larger income by keeping the brigands active in Trachonitis; for men living there by lawlessness plundered the territory of the Damascenes, and Zenodorus neither restrained them but shared in the profits himself. The neighboring peoples, suffering badly, cried out against Varro, then governing the province, and asked that they be allowed to write to Caesar about Zenodorus's wrongdoing. When this was reported to him, Caesar wrote back ordering the brigands destroyed, and assigned the territory to Herod, so that through his care the region around Trachonitis would no longer prove troublesome to its neighbors—for it was not easy to restrain men who had made brigandage a habit and had no other means of living; they had neither cities nor landed property, but hideouts underground and caves, and shared their existence with their flocks. They had also devised reservoirs of water and stores of food able to hold out for a very long time hidden from view. Their entrances were narrow, admitting only one person at a time, but the interior was worked out to an unbelievable size for spaciousness; the ground above their dwellings was not high, but level as it were with the plain. The rock throughout was hard and difficult to traverse, unless one used a path under guidance, for even the paths do not run straight but wind in many coils. Once these men were prevented from doing harm to their neighbors, brigandage turned against one another, so that no form of lawlessness was left untried among them. Having received this favor from Caesar, Herod entered the region and, with knowledge of the paths to guide him, put a stop to the wrongdoers and provided the surrounding peoples with untroubled peace.

Zenodorus, aggrieved first at the loss of his province, and still more out of envy that Herod had come into possession of the rule, went up to Rome to accuse him. But he returned having accomplished nothing. Agrippa was sent as Caesar's deputy over the provinces beyond the Ionian Sea, and Herod, meeting him wintering near Mytilene—for he was on the closest and most familiar terms of friendship with him—returned again to Judea. Some Gadarenes came before Agrippa to accuse Herod, and he, without even giving them a hearing, sent them back to the king in chains. The Arabs too, who had long been ill-disposed toward Herod's rule, were now stirred up and attempted to raise trouble against him, on this occasion with a cause that seemed more plausible: Zenodorus, already despairing of his own position, had hastened to sell a part of his province, Auranitis, to them for fifty talents. Since this was included in Caesar's grant, they disputed it as unjustly taken from them, at times resorting to raids and attempts at force, at other times going to plead their case; they also won over to their side those soldiers who were poor and ill-disposed, men always full of expectation and inclined toward revolution, the very thing in which those who fare badly in life most delight. Herod, though he knew these things had long been in preparation, nevertheless, out of calculation rather than hostility, sought to calm the disturbances, thinking it wrong to give them any occasion. Now when the seventeenth year of his reign had already come, Caesar arrived in Syria, and at that time most of the inhabitants of Gadara cried out against Herod, saying he was harsh in his exactions and tyrannical. They ventured this chiefly because Zenodorus was pressing the matter and slandering him, having sworn oaths that he would not give up until he had by every means both stripped Herod of his kingdom and added it to Caesar's administration. Persuaded by him, the Gadarenes made no small outcry, emboldened by the fact that even those handed over by Agrippa had not been punished, Herod having let them go and having done no wrong—for if anyone else seemed implacable toward his own household, he was magnanimous in pardoning wrongs committed by others. So when they accused him of outrages, plunder, and the destruction of temples, Herod, undisturbed, was ready to make his defense, and Caesar received him kindly, in no way altered in his goodwill by the disturbance of the crowd.

On the first day the arguments about these matters were presented, but on the following days the hearing did not proceed further. For the people of Gadara, seeing which way Caesar and the council were leaning, and expecting-as was likely-that they would be handed over to the king, and fearing torture, some cut their own throats that night, some threw themselves from heights, and others flung themselves into the river and perished by their own will.

This was taken as an admission of their rashness and wrongdoing, and Caesar, without any further delay, cleared Herod of the charges. And on top of what had already happened there came no small stroke of good fortune: Zenodorus, his spleen having ruptured and much blood draining away through his illness, died at Antioch in Syria. Caesar then gave Herod no small part of Zenodorus's former territory, the land lying between Trachonitis and Galilee-Ulatha, Panias, and the surrounding country. He attached it to the administration of Syria, instructing the governors to act in all matters in consultation with Herod. Altogether Herod's good fortune reached such a height that, of the two men who then governed the vast Roman world, Caesar and, after him, Agrippa, Caesar valued no one above Herod except Agrippa, and Agrippa placed Herod first in his friendship after Caesar himself.

Enjoying such standing, Herod asked Caesar to grant a tetrarchy to his brother Pheroras, assigning it out of his own kingdom an income of a hundred talents, so that if anything happened to him, Pheroras's position would be secure and not fall under the control of Herod's own sons by his wife. When he had escorted Caesar to the coast on his departure, Herod on his return built for him a magnificent temple of white stone in the district of Zenodorus, near the place called Panium. There is a very beautiful cave in a mountain there, beneath which the ground falls away into a deep chasm, choked with still water of unfathomable depth, and above it rises an enormous mountain; beneath the cave the springs of the Jordan river break forth.

Herod further adorned this already famous spot with the temple, which he dedicated to Caesar. At that time he also remitted a third of the taxes to the people of his kingdom, ostensibly so they might recover from a bad harvest, but in fact chiefly to win back their goodwill, since they had grown hostile to him. For in carrying out such measures as his-since their religious observance was being disrupted and their customs overturned-they had taken it hard, and there was talk everywhere among the people, who were constantly stirred up and agitated.

Herod, for his part, applied great vigilance against any such unrest, depriving people of opportunities for it and requiring that they be constantly occupied with labor; no assembly of the townspeople was permitted, nor any association for walking together or shared meals-everything was kept under watch. Those who were caught faced harsh punishments, and many, both openly and secretly, were taken away to the fortress of Hyrcania and there put to death. Both in the city and on the roads there were men keeping watch on those who gathered together. It is said that Herod himself did not neglect this business, but often disguised himself as an ordinary man and mixed among the crowds at night, testing what opinion they held of his rule.

As for those who were altogether defiant and refused to accommodate themselves to his ways, he hunted them down by every means; but the rest of the populace he required to bind themselves by oath of loyalty, compelling them to swear that they would maintain their goodwill toward his rule. Most people yielded to what he demanded, out of servility or fear, but those who showed independence of spirit and resented being forced into it he removed from his path by every means. He also tried to persuade the followers of Pollio the Pharisee and Samaias, and most of those who associated with them, to take the oath; but they neither agreed to it, nor were they punished as the other refusers were, since out of respect for Pollio they were spared. The Essenes, as we call them, were also excused from this obligation-a group that follows a way of life like that established among the Greeks by Pythagoras.

I discuss these matters more fully elsewhere. But it is worth explaining why Herod honored the Essenes and held them in higher regard than their mortal station would suggest, for the account is not unsuitable to the character of this history and will also illustrate what opinion was held of them. There was a certain Essene named Manahem, renowned for the excellence of his character and way of life, and possessing foreknowledge of the future granted by God.

This man, seeing Herod while he was still a boy attending his lessons, hailed him as king of the Jews. Herod, thinking the man either did not know him or was mocking him, reminded him that he was merely a private citizen. Manahem, smiling gently and striking him on the buttocks with his hand, said, 'Nevertheless you will be king,'

'and you will bring your rule to a happy conclusion, for you have been found worthy by God. And remember the blows of Manahem, so that this too may serve you as a token of the reversals of fortune. For the best course of reasoning would be this: if you were to love justice and piety toward God and fairness toward your citizens; but I know well that you will not be such a man, knowing the whole of it.',

'For in good fortune you will surpass nearly everyone and win eternal renown, but you will forget piety and justice. These things will not escape God's notice, and at the close of your life his wrath will be remembered against you in requital for them.' At the time Herod paid hardly any attention to these words, having no hope of such things; but as he gradually rose, even to kingship, and prospered',

in the greatness of his rule, he sent for Manahem and asked him how long he would reign. Manahem did not tell him the whole of it; but when Herod pressed him with his silence, asking only whether he would have ten years of kingship, he added twenty, and then thirty, without ever fixing an outer limit to the term. Herod, satisfied even with this, dismissed Manahem

with a warm handshake, and from then on continued to honor all the Essenes. Even though these matters may seem strange, I have thought it worthwhile to relate them to my readers and to make plain something about our own people, since many among them are held worthy of such gifts because of their virtue and their knowledge of divine things. It was then, in the eighteenth year of Herod's reign, after the events already related, that he undertook a work of no ordinary kind:

to rebuild the temple of God at his own expense, making its precinct larger and raising it to a more fitting height, believing that this, more than anything he had done, would prove-as indeed it did-the most conspicuous of all his achievements and would suffice to secure him everlasting remembrance. Knowing that the people were not eager for this and that it would not be easy given the scale of the undertaking, he thought it best to prepare them first with a speech before attempting the whole project, and so he called them together and spoke as follows.

'Of the other things I have accomplished during my reign, fellow countrymen, I think it superfluous to speak, although they were carried out in such a way as to bring less adornment to me than security to you. For neither in the most difficult circumstances did I neglect what served your needs, nor in my building projects did I pursue my own advantage more than',

the freedom from harm of you all-so that, I believe, with God's favor I have brought the Jewish nation to a greater degree of prosperity than it ever had before. As for the individual works carried out throughout the country, and the cities we have built there and in the territories newly acquired, adding to the glory of our people with the finest embellishment, it seems needless to me to speak of them to those who already know. But the undertaking which I now propose to attempt,

I will now declare to be the most pious and the finest achievement of our times: for this temple was built to the Most High God by our fathers after the return from Babylon, but it falls short by sixty cubits of the height that it ought to have-by so much did that first temple, which Solomon built, exceed it. And let no one condemn our fathers for neglecting their piety, for it was not by any fault of theirs

that the temple came to be smaller than that one; rather, it was Cyrus and Darius the son of Hystaspes who set the measurements for the building, and our fathers, being subject to them and their descendants, and afterward to the Macedonians, had no opportunity to restore the original structure to its full former size. But now, since I rule by the will of God, and there is a long span of peace, and

abundance of wealth and greatness of revenue, and-what matters most-friendship and goodwill from the Romans, who rule virtually the whole world, I will try to remedy what was neglected through the constraint and subjection of earlier times, and to render to God the complete piety owed in return for the kingship I have obtained.' Thus Herod spoke, and his words, coming as they did unexpectedly, struck most of the people with astonishment.

The incredible scale of the hope did not stir them to enthusiasm; rather they were anxious that he might tear down the whole structure and then be unable to bring the undertaking to completion-the risk seemed to them too great, and the scale of the enterprise too hard to carry out. Seeing them in this state of mind, the king reassured them, declaring that he would not tear down the temple until everything needed for its completion

had been prepared. And having said this in advance, he did not break his word: he made ready a thousand wagons to carry the stones, selected ten thousand of the most skilled workmen, and bought sacerdotal robes for a thousand priests, training some of them as masons and others as carpenters, and only then, when everything had been zealously prepared for him, did he set to work on the construction. Having removed the old foundations and laid new ones in their place, he raised up a temple

a hundred cubits in length and twenty cubits in extra height, which sank over time as the foundations settled; and this we had determined to raise again in the days of Nero. The temple was built of white and massive stones, each about twenty-five cubits in length, eight in height, and about twelve in width.

The whole of it, like the royal portico as well, was lowest at either end and highest in the middle, so that it was visible from many stades away to those living in the countryside, and especially to those who lived opposite it or were approaching it. The doors at the entrance, together with their lintels, were of the same height as the temple itself and were adorned with elaborate hangings, on which flowers

were worked in purple, and pillars woven into the design. Above them, beneath the cornices, stretched a golden vine with clusters of grapes hanging down-a marvel both of its size and of its craftsmanship to all who saw it, given the costliness of the material used in its making. He also surrounded the whole temple with immense colonnades, proportioned to match it, and surpassing in expense all that had gone before, so that no one

seems to have adorned the temple more magnificently. Both the temple and its colonnades stood within the wall, and the wall itself was a work of the greatest magnitude ever recorded among men. There was a rocky hill rising gently on the eastern side of the city up to its highest point. This hill our first king Solomon, with great forethought and immense labor, walled in around the summit, building the wall from below

starting at its base, which a deep ravine surrounds, with towering stones bound together with lead, always taking in more of the interior space as the wall advanced deeper into the ravine, so that the size and height of the structure, built up as a square, became immeasurable-so much so that the sizes of the stones could be seen on the outer face, while on the inside they were secured with iron to hold

the joints immovable for all time. When the construction had thus reached the summit of the hill, he leveled off its top and filled in the hollows around the wall, making the whole surface even and smooth. This entire enclosure had a circuit of four stades, each side measuring a stade in length. Within this, and

close by the summit itself, another wall of stone ran around above, having on its eastern ridge, level with the outer wall, a double colonnade facing the doors of the temple, which stood in the middle. This colonnade many earlier kings had built. Around the whole sanctuary hung barbarian spoils taken in war, all of which King Herod dedicated, adding to them what he had also taken from the Arabians.

On the north side stood a well-fortified, four-cornered citadel of exceptional strength. This the kings and high priests of the Hasmonean line, before Herod, had built and called Baris, since the priestly vestments were kept there, to be worn by the high priest only when he had to perform sacrifice. King Herod kept the vestments there in the same place, and after his

death they remained under Roman control until the time of Tiberius Caesar. Under Tiberius, Vitellius, governor of Syria, visited Jerusalem, and when the people received him most splendidly, wishing to repay their kindness, he wrote to Tiberius Caesar-since they had asked to have the sacred vestments placed under their own authority-and Tiberius granted it; and control of the vestments remained with the

Jews until the death of King Agrippa. After him, Cassius Longinus, then governor of Syria, and Cuspius Fadus, procurator of Judea, ordered the Jews to deposit the vestments in the Antonia, since the Romans, they said, ought to have control of them, as they had before. The Jews therefore sent envoys to Claudius Caesar to plead the matter. When they had gone up to Rome, the

younger king Agrippa, who happened to be in Rome, asked the emperor for the authority over the vestments and received it, the emperor instructing Vitellius, the governor of Syria, accordingly. Previously the vestments had been kept under the seal of the high priest and the treasurers, and on the day before a festival the treasurers would go up to the Roman garrison commander, examine their own seal, and take the vestments; then again once the festival had passed,

they would bring them back to the same place and, after showing the commander the seal was intact, deposit them there once more. This was the situation, made clear by the misfortune of the events that followed. At that time, then, Herod king of the Jews made this citadel too more secure, for the safety and guarding of the temple, and named it Antonia, in honor of his friend Antony, ruler of the Romans. On the

western side of the enclosure there stood four gates: one leading to the royal palace, crossing the intervening ravine by a passage; two leading to the suburb; and the last leading to the rest of the city, reached by many steps down into the ravine and then up again from there to the ascent on the other side, for the city lay directly opposite the temple

On the western side of the enclosure stood four gates. One led to the palace, crossing the intervening ravine; two led to the suburb; and the last led to the rest of the city, by many steps down into the ravine and then up again on the other side to the ascent — for the city lay opposite the temple, shaped like a theater, hemmed in on its whole southern flank by a deep ravine.

The fourth face of the enclosure, the one facing south, likewise had gates in its middle, and above them ran the royal portico, a triple colonnade stretching the full length from the eastern ravine to the western. It was impossible to extend it any farther; and it was the most remarkable work under the sun.

For since the retaining wall of the ravine was enormous and unbearable to look down from, if one leaned over from above into the depth, the height of the portico built upon it rose to an equally immense scale, so that if someone standing at the top of its roof combined both depths in a single glance, dizziness would overcome him, his sight unable to reach the measureless bottom.

Columns stood in rows opposite one another, four rows deep — the fourth row was bonded into a wall built of stone — and each column was thick enough that three men, arms outstretched, could just encircle it, and twenty-seven feet tall, set on a double base. The columns numbered one hundred and sixty-two in all, their capitals worked in the Corinthian style, carved with a workmanship that struck onlookers with amazement at the grandeur of the whole.

With four rows of columns, three aisles were formed running the length between the colonnades. Of these, two were parallel and built in the same fashion, each thirty feet wide, a stadium long, and more than fifty feet high; the middle aisle was one and a half times as wide and twice as high, rising far above the two on either side. The ceilings were adorned with wood carved in manifold patterns of figures, and the middle aisle's height was raised still further by a parapet wall built above the architraves, set with engaged columns, the whole of polished stone — a sight incredible to those who had not seen it, and one that struck all who beheld it with wonder. Such, then, was the first enclosure.

Not far within it, and reached by a few steps, was a second court, surrounded by a stone balustrade with an inscription forbidding any foreigner to enter, on pain of death.

This inner enclosure had, on its southern and northern sides, gateways in three rows set apart from one another, and on the side facing the sunrise a single great gate, through which we who were ritually pure passed together with our wives. Farther within, that same area was forbidden to women. Farther in still was a third court, which only the priests were permitted to enter.

Within this stood the temple itself, and before it the altar on which we used to offer whole burnt sacrifices to God. Into none of these three courts did King Herod ever pass, for he was barred from doing so, not being a priest. But he did busy himself with the work on the porticoes and the outer enclosures, and these he built in eight years.

When the temple itself had been built by the priests in a year and five months, the whole people was filled with joy, and, marveling at the speed of the work, they first gave thanks to God, and then celebrated, with equal enthusiasm for the king, the rebuilding, praising it with acclamations. The king sacrificed three hundred oxen to God, and the rest of the people offered as many as each could afford — a number impossible to state, for it truly defies telling.

As it happened, the appointed date for finishing the work on the temple coincided with the day of the king's accession, which by custom they used to celebrate, so that the two feasts falling together made the occasion the most splendid of all.

A secret tunnel was also built for the king, running from the Antonia to the inner sanctuary, to the eastern gate, above which he also built himself a tower, so that he might go up into it through the underground passage, guarding against any uprising of the people directed at the kings.

It is said that at that time, while the temple was under construction, no rain fell during the day, but showers came only at night, so as not to hinder the work; and this account has been handed down to us by our fathers, nor is it hard to believe, if one considers the other manifestations of God as well. In this manner, then, the work on the temple was completed.

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