Antiquities — Book 17

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

How Antipater was hated by the whole nation because of the killing of his brothers, and how because of this he courted favor with the people at Rome with large sums of money, and with Saturninus, who had been entrusted with Syria, and the officials with him. How King Herod, seeing that the region of Trachonitis could not be kept stable because of the raids of the Arabs, summoned Zamaris, a Jew who had withdrawn from Babylon and was living at Antioch, and settled him there, using him as a bulwark against the Arabs. How, when Herod treated the children of his sons Alexander and Aristobulus as his own and betrothed to them the daughters of Pheroras, Antipater persuaded his father to transfer the betrothal to his own children instead. And how Antipater courted Pheroras's circle, wishing now to plot against his father through them. How the king's sister Salome learned of this secretly and reported it to her brother. How Herod ordered Antipater not to visit Pheroras, nor to tell him anything secret; and Antipater did nothing openly, but did it in secret, and even this did not escape Herod. How Antipater wrote to his friends at Rome, urging them to write to his father to persuade him to send Antipater to Caesar with a great deal of money, and Herod, persuaded, sent his son off. How Antipater persuaded Pheroras to kill his father Herod with poison, himself giving the poison to Pheroras. And how King Herod ordered his brother Pheroras to cast out his wife or withdraw from the kingdom; Pheroras heard this gladly, withdrew to his own tetrarchy, and died there not long after. The accusation brought against Pheroras's wife by Pheroras's brothers, that he had been killed by poison. And how Herod, on investigating, found that the poison had been prepared against him by his own son Antipater, and, having applied torture, learned of Antipater's plots. Antipater's voyage back from Rome to his father. And how, accused by Nicolaus of Damascus and condemned to death by his father and by Quintilius Varus, then governor of Syria, he was kept in chains until Caesar should render his decision. An embassy sent by Herod to Caesar concerning Antipater. And how Caesar, on hearing the charges, condemned him to death. Concerning Herod's illness and the uprising of the Jews because of it, and the punishment of the rebels. How, when Antipater supposed Herod had died, he spoke with his bodyguard about securing his own release, and how this led to Antipater's execution. Herod's death and his will, addressed to Caesar, and the division of the kingdom among his three sons. And how Caesar made Archelaus king of Judea. Herod's letter to the army, with a gift to each soldier and an exhortation to keep faith with his son Archelaus. Herod's burial at the fortress of Herodium. And how the people rose up against his son Archelaus at the festival. How Archelaus killed three thousand of them, and himself sailed to Caesar in Rome together with his brother Herod, entrusting his kingdom meanwhile to his brother Philip. How Sabinus, Caesar's procurator in Syria, went up to Jerusalem and forcibly demanded Herod's money and fortresses from Archelaus's stewards. How Archelaus's stewards persuaded the people to take up arms and besiege Sabinus and his troops in the Antonia. And how Varus, on hearing of this, marched up to Jerusalem with a large force, rescued Sabinus from the siege, punished those responsible for the revolt, and, having set affairs in Judea in good order, wrote to Caesar reporting what had been done. How Caesar confirmed Herod's will, preserving the succession for his sons. And how Archelaus was accused by his own relatives before Caesar, and, having prevailed, received the kingdom; but after ruling badly for ten years he was accused again and exiled to Vienne, and Caesar converted his kingdom into a Roman province. This book covers a period of fourteen years.

For Antipater, who had raised his hand against his brothers with the utmost impiety and had wrapped his father in the curse that followed from it, the hope of the life still to come did not turn out as he wished. Once freed from the fear that had hung over his position — since his brothers no longer shared any claim to it — he found securing the kingdom for himself more laborious and more hopeless than before, so great was the hatred that had grown up against him in the nation. And while this alone was hard enough, he was troubled still more by the army, whose sentiments toward him were hostile — the very men on whom kings depend entirely for their own safety whenever the nation is inclined toward revolution. So great a danger had the destruction of his brothers stored up for him.

Nevertheless he still shared in the rule with his father in no other way than as if he were king himself, and was trusted by him all the more, since he had thought it good to win proofs of his goodwill precisely from destroying his brothers, as though he had denounced them for the sake of Herod's safety and security, not out of hatred toward them and, before them, toward his father — such, in fact, were the curses he was heaping upon Herod all the while. All this, then, served as devices clearing Antipater's path to power, since it stripped him of accusers for what he intended to do, and stripped Herod of anyone to whom he might turn for help, now that Antipater had openly become his enemy. So it was out of hatred for his father that he had carried out the plot against his brothers, but what weighed on him more was that, having put his hand to the plot, he could not let it go: if Herod died, the throne would pass to him securely; but if Herod lived on still longer, and dangers arose in turn from the plot becoming known — a plot of which Antipater himself was the author — he would be forced to turn his father into his enemy.

Through his lavish gift-giving he won over those close to his father, astonishing men's hatred of him with great sums of money, and above all he made the friends at Rome well disposed toward him by sending them costly gifts, most of all Saturninus, the governor of Syria. He also hoped to win over Saturninus's brother through the size of the presents he gave him, and likewise the king's sister, who was married to the foremost man in Herod's circle, using the same method with her. Feigning friendship toward those he dealt with, he was extremely skilled at winning trust, and, having conceived hatred against certain people, was most shrewd at concealing it. Yet he did not deceive his aunt, who had long since taken his measure and was no longer the kind of person who could be misled, and who had already set herself, with every preparation, against his malice. And yet her daughter was married to his uncle on his mother's side, through Antipater's own scheming and contrivance, having taken a girl earlier married to Aristobulus; and her other daughter was the wife of the son of her husband Calleas. But this marriage connection proved no shield against his wickedness being recognized, just as the earlier kinship had not kept him from being hated.

Herod, meanwhile, forced Salome — who, out of erotic desire, was eager to marry Syllaeus the Arab — to live with Alexas instead, with Julia cooperating in this and persuading Salome not to refuse the marriage, lest hostility arise between them, since Herod had openly sworn he would bear Salome no goodwill unless she accepted marriage to Alexas. And Salome yielded, both because Julia was Caesar's wife and because her advice was altogether to Salome's advantage. At this same time Herod also sent Archelaus's daughter back to her father the king, since she had been married to Alexander; he returned her dowry from his own funds, so that no dispute at all should remain between them.

He himself raised the children of his sons with great care; for Alexander had two sons by Glaphyra, and Aristobulus had, by Berenice the daughter of Salome, three sons and two daughters. Once, with his friends present, he set the little children before him and, lamenting the fate of their fathers, prayed that nothing of the kind should ever befall these children, but that, once grown to manhood in virtue, they might repay him — through the very misfortune that justice had brought on their fathers — for the upbringing he was giving them. He had betrothed them for marriage, once they should reach the proper age: the elder of Alexander's sons to Pheroras's daughter, and Aristobulus's son to Antipater's daughter; he named one of Aristobulus's daughters for Antipater's son, and the other for his own son Herod, whom the king had by the daughter of the high priest — for it is our ancestral custom for a man to be married to several wives at once. The king arranged these betrothals of the children out of pity for the orphans, so as to win their goodwill, and to conciliate Antipater through the alliance. But Antipater did not relent from his settled purpose against his brothers, extending it now to their children as well, once they were born; his father's evident devotion to them provoked him, since he expected they would grow greater than their fathers' brothers had been, especially once they came of age — Archelaus being ready to claim the king's granddaughters for his own family, and Pheroras for the one who would marry his daughter, he too being a tetrarch. He was stirred as well by the whole populace, who treated the orphans with pity but directed all their hatred at him, since he had not shed his reputation for wickedness toward their fathers. He therefore schemed to undo what had been settled with his father, counting it a fearful thing that these children should come into contact with so great a power through such an alliance. And Herod kept changing his mind, yielding to Antipater's entreaties, so that in the end he himself married Aristobulus's daughter, and Pheroras's son married Antipater's daughter. Thus the marriage agreements were altered in this way, against the king's own original wish.

At this time nine wives lived with King Herod: Antipater's mother; and the high priest's daughter, by whom he had a son of the same name as himself; he also had one niece married to him, a brother's daughter, together with a cousin — to these no child was born. Among his wives there was also one of Samaritan birth, whose children were Antipas and Archelaus, and a daughter, Olympias, whom Joseph, the king's nephew, later married; Archelaus and Antipas were being raised at Rome under a private tutor. Cleopatra of Jerusalem was also married to him, and by her he had two sons, Herod and Philip, the latter also being raised at Rome. Pallas too, among his wives, had borne him a son, Phasael; and besides these there were Phaedra and Elpis, from whom came two daughters, Roxane and Salome. His elder daughters, born of the same mother as Alexander, whose marriage Pheroras had overlooked, were married — one to Antipater, son of the king's sister, and the other to Phasael, son of Herod's brother. Such was Herod's family.

At that time, wishing to secure himself against the Trachonites, Herod decided to found in their midst a village no smaller than a city, settled with Jews, both to make his own territory harder to penetrate and to be able to strike quickly against the enemy from closer range. Learning that a Jewish man from Babylonia, together with five hundred mounted archers and about a hundred kinsmen, had crossed the Euphrates and happened to be living at Antioch-by-Daphne in Syria — Saturninus, then governor there, having given him a place called Ulatha to settle in — Herod sent for this man together with the crowd that followed him, promising to give him land in the district called Batanea, which bordered on Trachonitis. He wished to make this man's settlement a bulwark, and so promised the land tax-free, freeing the settlers from all the taxes normally levied on those who occupied the land, offering it to him without any burden. Persuaded by these terms, the Babylonian came, and, having taken possession of the land, built forts and a village, naming it Bathyra. This man became a bulwark both for the local inhabitants against the Trachonites, and for the Jews who came from Babylon to Jerusalem to sacrifice, protecting them from being harmed by Trachonite brigands; and many came to him from every direction, people among whom the ancestral customs of the Jews are observed. The region grew very populous, thanks to the freedom from taxation that remained in force for them as long as Herod lived. Philip, his son, on taking over the rule, imposed few and light burdens on them; Agrippa the Great, however, and his son of the same name, wore them down considerably, though the people never wished to disturb their freedom. The Romans, on receiving the rule from them, likewise preserved their claim to freedom, but pressed them hard with the imposition of taxes. These matters I will describe in greater detail as the narrative proceeds.

Zamaris the Babylonian, who had attached himself to Herod in order to acquire this territory, died after a life of virtue, leaving behind good sons: Jacimus, who, having distinguished himself for courage, organized the Babylonian cavalry under his own command, and a squadron of these men served as bodyguard to these kings. Jacimus, dying in old age, left behind his son Philip, a man capable in action and, in every other respect, remarkable for his virtue beyond anyone else. For this reason a loyal friendship and a firm goodwill grew up between him and King Agrippa, and he continued to train whatever army the king maintained and to lead it out wherever it needed to march.

While Herod was occupied with the matters I have described, all affairs turned upon Antipater, and he was never without the power to carry out whatever he judged beneficial to himself, since his father had granted him this authority in the hope of his goodwill and loyalty; and Antipater, growing bolder, ventured to acquire still further power over these matters, because he could work his mischief without his father's knowledge and yet be thought altogether trustworthy in whatever he said. He was feared by everyone, not so much for the strength of his authority as for the forethought behind his malice. Pheroras above all courted him, and was courted by him in turn in a dreadful fashion, since Antipater had thoroughly surrounded him and won over the women of his household to his side; for Pheroras was enslaved to his wife, to her mother, and to her sister, even though he hated these women for the insolence they showed toward his own unmarried daughters. Even so he put up with them, and nothing was done apart from these women, who kept him surrounded on every side and, being of one mind with each other, cooperated in everything without exception — so that Antipater had won them over completely, both through himself and through his mother, for these four women all said the very same thing. And as for Pheroras's dealings with Antipater, in matters of no great consequence...

Their attitudes toward each other kept shifting. What pulled against them both was the king's sister, who watched everything from a greater distance and knew that their goodwill toward each other was being carried on to Herod's harm, and who had no scruple about reporting it. Once Pheroras and Antipater realized that this mutual affection had made them objects of the king's hatred, they contrived to keep their meetings with one another from being visible, while making their mutual hostility and abuse conspicuous whenever the occasion called for pretense—above all when Herod was present, or when people were on hand who would report to him—while in secret they made their friendship all the more secure. And so they carried on. None of this escaped Salome, neither at the start, when they first set their minds on such a course, nor afterward, when they had not given it up; she tracked everything and, magnifying it further to her brother, reported their secret meetings

and drinking parties and council sessions arranged out of sight, which, had they not been plotted for his destruction, need not have been hidden even if they had come to light. But as things stood, men who were openly at odds and spoke everything to each other's harm, yet reserved their true goodwill for the many in secret, and whenever they found themselves alone together acted as friends without having ceased to be so, were in effect confessing that they were waging war against the very people toward whom, by concealment, they were showing themselves eager in mutual affection. Salome tracked all this and, getting precise information, reported it to her brother, who already understood much of it on his own, though her accusations were not without effect in making him more confident of his suspicions.

There was, moreover, a certain group among the Jews who prided themselves on exact observance of their ancestral customs and the laws in which the Deity delights, and by whom the women of the court had been won over—these are called Pharisees. Toward a king with the greatest power to act, they were forward and quick, openly bent on making war and doing harm. Indeed, when the whole Jewish people confirmed by oath that they would be loyal to Caesar and to the king's government, these men, more than six thousand in number, refused to swear; and when the king fined them for it, Pheroras's wife paid the fine on their behalf.

In return for her kindness—since they were credited with foreknowledge through divine visitation—they predicted that God had decreed the end of Herod's rule for him and for his line, and that the kingdom would pass to her and to Pheroras and to whatever children they might have. Salome was not unaware of this, and she reported it all to the king. He put to death the most culpable of the Pharisees, and also Bagoas the eunuch, and a certain Carus, who at that time surpassed others in the excellence of his good looks and was Herod's favorite. He killed as well everyone in his household who had aligned themselves with what the Pharisee had said. Bagoas had been puffed up by them with the promise that he would be called father and benefactor of the one who would be set up in fulfillment of the king's foretold successor—for everything would be in that man's power, since he would grant Bagoas both the capacity for marriage and the begetting of legitimate children.

Herod, having punished the Pharisees convicted on these charges, then convened a council of his friends and brought an accusation against Pheroras's wife, laying the outrage against the maidens at the door of the woman's boldness, and making that itself a further charge against her—that in stirring up strife between him and his brother she had, by every means in her power, whether by word or by deed, waged on nature's behalf the war between them, and that the payment of the fine he had imposed on the Pharisees had been diverted through her own funds, and that there was nothing now done that was not done with her involvement. "For all this, Pheroras," he said, "it would have been proper—and there was no need even for me to suggest it to you—for you to send this woman away of your own accord, as one who would be to you the cause of war against me. And now, if indeed you still lay claim to kinship with me, renounce this wife; for only so will you remain both my brother and one who has not given up loving me."

Pheroras, though overborne by the force of these words, said that neither the claims of kinship with his brother nor his affection for his wife could move him to do anything unjust, and that he would choose rather to die than to endure, while living, being robbed of a wife who was dear to him. Herod restrained his anger against Pheroras over this, though he had exacted a punishment far from pleasant; but he forbade Antipater to associate with Pheroras's wife or with her mother, and ordered the women to be kept from any meeting together. They agreed to this in words, but continued to meet whenever occasion allowed, and Pheroras and Antipater kept up their carousing together.

A rumor also went about that Pheroras's wife was on intimate terms with Antipater as well, with Antipater's mother helping to arrange their meetings. Suspicious of his father and afraid that his hatred toward him might go still further, Antipater wrote to his friends in Rome, urging them to write to Herod telling him to send Antipater to Caesar as quickly as possible. When this was done, Herod sent Antipater off, having him carry the most valuable gifts along with a will in which he declared Antipater king after himself—or, should Herod die first, the son born to him by the high priest's daughter.

Syllaeus the Arab set out for Rome along with Antipater, having accomplished none of what Caesar had ordered, and Antipater accused him before Caesar of the same matters Nicolaus had earlier charged. Syllaeus was also accused by Aretas, on the ground that he had put to death, against Aretas's wishes, a number of the notable men of Petra, above all Soaemus, a man most deserving of honor for his excellence in every respect, and that he had also killed Fabatus, a slave of Caesar's. The charge against Syllaeus arose in this way: Corinthus was a bodyguard of King Herod's, one of those most trusted by him. Syllaeus persuaded this man, for a great sum of money, to kill Herod, and Corinthus agreed. Fabatus, learning of what Syllaeus had said to him,

reported it to the king. Herod had Corinthus arrested and tortured, and everything became known to him. He also arrested two other Arabs implicated by Corinthus's testimony, one a tribal chief and the other a friend of Syllaeus. These two, when the king had them tortured, admitted that they had come to keep Corinthus from losing his nerve, and, if it should be needed, to lend a hand in the murder themselves. Saturninus, once everything had been reported to him by Herod, sent them off to Rome.

Herod ordered Pheroras, who still clung firmly to his affection for his wife, to withdraw to his own territory. He set off gladly for his tetrarchy, swearing many oaths that he would not come back until he learned that Herod was dead—so much so that even when the king fell ill and asked him to come, on the pledge that certain instructions would be given him if Herod should be about to die, he did not comply, out of regard for his oath. Herod, however, did not repay him in kind for the attitude Pheroras had shown on that occasion; instead, when Pheroras himself later fell ill, he went to him, and when no summons had come from Pheroras, and Pheroras had died, Herod had the body prepared and brought to Jerusalem, insisted on burial there, and proclaimed great mourning for him. This, though Antipater was by now sailing for Rome, became the beginning of the disasters that led to fratricide, as God took vengeance on him. I will relate the whole account concerning him, since it will serve as an example to mankind of what happens to one who means to conduct his life with virtue in everything.

When Pheroras died, two of his freedmen, men who had been in his confidence, came to Herod and asked that he not leave his brother's death unavenged, but investigate this senseless and unfortunate change. The king, moved by their words—for they seemed credible—was told that Pheroras had dined at his former wife's house shortly before his illness, and that poison had been brought and mixed into a dish he was not accustomed to eat, and that after eating it he had died from it; that the poison had been procured by a woman from Arabia, ostensibly for use as a love-charm—for that indeed was its name—but in truth meant for Pheroras's death.

The women of Arabia are the most skilled in poisons of all women; and the woman to whom this task had been assigned was, as it happened, on close and acknowledged terms of friendship with Syllaeus's mistress. Hoping to persuade her to sell the poison, the mother and sister of Pheroras's wife had gone to that region, and were bringing her back with them, arriving one day before the dinner. Roused by this account, the king had the women's slaves put to torture, and some free women as well, and since the matter remained unclear because no one would speak, one of the women, at the very end of her endurance under the torments, said nothing else but that she called on God to visit such torments on Antipater's mother, the cause of the evils weighing on everyone.

This brought Herod to attention, and under torture of the women everything came to light—the carousing and the secret meetings, and indeed the disclosure to Pheroras's wives of words spoken to the son alone; and there was the matter of a gift of a hundred talents that the father had ordered kept hidden, which Antipater was to tell Pheroras about; and hatred toward the father, and complaints made to the mother, saying that his father had been drawn out to live an extremely long time, and that old age was pressing on Antipater himself no less, so that even should the kingdom come to him, it would no longer bring him the same joy;

and that many were being kept in reserve for the throne—both brothers and the sons of brothers—who gave no assurance of security for his hope; and indeed that even now, if anything should happen to him, his father was ordering that the rule be given to a brother rather than to his own son. He accused the king of great cruelty, and of the murder of his sons, and said that out of fear that he too might soon be touched by it, the one at Rome had devised a scheme, and Pheroras one in his own tetrarchy. These matters were consistent with what his sister had said, and did much to remove any remaining suspicion that they were untrue.

The king, now convinced of Antipater's wickedness, stripped Doris, Antipater's mother, of all her personal ornaments, worth many talents, and then sent her away, and made a treaty of friendship with Pheroras's wives. What most incited the king to anger against his son was a Samaritan man named Antipater, steward to the king's son Antipater, who under torture, besides other things about him, disclosed that Antipater had prepared a deadly poison and had ordered it given to Pheroras during his own absence abroad, so that he might be as far removed as possible from any suspicion in such matters, with instructions to give it to his father. He said that Antiphilus, one of Antipater's friends, had brought the poison from Egypt, and that it had been sent to Pheroras by way of Theudion, the mother of Antipater's cousin, the king's brother's son, and that in this way the poison had come

to Pheroras's wife, given to her by her husband to keep. When the king examined her, she admitted this, and running as if to fetch it, threw herself down from the roof, but did not die, since she fell on her feet. Once he had revived her, promising her immunity and the same for her household if she did not turn to concealing the truth—but that he would grind her down with the worst afflictions if she persisted in defiance—she agreed and swore that she would indeed tell the whole story of how it had happened, saying, as most people also affirmed, that it was all true.

"The poison," she said, "was brought from Egypt by Antiphilus; his brother, who is a physician, supplied it, and when Theudion brought it to us I kept it myself, having received it from Pheroras, prepared by Antipater for use against you. When Pheroras fell ill and you came to attend him, seeing your goodwill toward him, he was broken in his resolve, and calling me to him he said, 'Wife, Antipater has worked his way around me, using my own father and my own brother, and has devised a deadly plan and procured a poison to be used through my agency against him. Now, since my brother has shown, in his conduct toward me lately, that he holds back nothing of his former kindness, and since I have hope that I shall not be long for this life, I would not want to pay for it by a scheme of fratricide against my own forefathers.' He told me to burn the poison before his own eyes, and I did so at once, delaying nothing, in obedience to my husband's instructions.

I burned most of the poison, but kept back a little, so that if Pheroras died and the king should treat me badly, I might use it to escape my troubles." Having said this, she produced the poison and the box in the middle of the assembly. Antiphilus's brother and his mother, under compulsion and the severity of torture, said the same things and recognized the box. The high priest's daughter, the king's wife, was also accused, as one who had known all this and had been eager to conceal it. For this reason Herod cast her out and struck her son from the will as far as concerned his becoming king, and took the high priesthood away from his father-in-law Simon son of Boethus, appointing in his place Matthias son of Theophilus, a native of Jerusalem.

Meanwhile Bathyllus, a freedman of Antipater's, arrived from Rome and, when tortured, was found to be carrying poison meant to be given to his own mother and to Pheroras, so that, if the first attempt did not touch the king, they might use this one to finish him off. Letters also arrived from Herod's friends in Rome, composed at Antipater's suggestion and dictation, accusing Archelaus and Philip, as though they were slandering their father over the killing of Aristobulus and Alexander, and were themselves winning sympathy by it—for they were already being summoned by their father, not on other charges but on the same ones that had destroyed the earlier brothers, since their recall was being arranged. The friends carried this out for Antipater in return for large sums. Antipater himself also wrote to his father about them, in the gravest terms of accusation, while claiming to be entirely clearing the young men, and casting the blame on their youth.

He himself was meanwhile pressing his case against Syllaeus, and had been paying court to the leading men, having bought for himself a splendid array of ornaments worth two hundred talents. One might well wonder that, with so much stirred up against him in Judea, nothing became clear to him for seven months beforehand; the reason was the strict watch kept on the roads, and the hatred people bore toward Antipater—for there was no one willing, at his own risk, to become a supplier of security to the man. When Antipater wrote to Herod that, having accomplished everything as he should, he would soon return, Herod, concealing his anger, wrote back urging him not to delay his journey, lest something happen to him during his absence, and at the same time accusing his mother of having done him some small

He kept promising to lay to rest his complaints against his mother once his father arrived, and in every way he displayed affection toward him, afraid that if Antipater grew suspicious of anything he would delay his journey home and, settling in at Rome, would use his resources to lie in wait for the kingdom, or even work some scheme against it there. It was in Cilicia that Antipater came upon these letters, along with others reporting the death of Pheroras — the earlier ones had reached him at Tarentum. He took the news badly, not out of any love for Pheroras, but because his father's murder had not been carried out as Pheroras had promised, and Pheroras had died without accomplishing it.

When he reached Celenderis in Cilicia he began to hesitate about the voyage home, deeply pained at his mother's expulsion, and his friends were divided: some urged him to hold back and watch how things developed, others urged him not to delay the voyage home, since his arrival would dissolve every charge against him, just as now it was nothing else but his absence that had given his accusers their strength. Persuaded by these, he sailed and put in at the harbor called Sebastos, which Herod had built at great expense and named Sebastus in honor of Caesar. By now Antipater's ruin was plain for all to see: no one came near him, no one greeted him, as they had when he set out amid prayers and favorable omens — instead the bitterest curses went unchecked, since people supposed he owed a penalty for his brothers.

At this time Quintilius Varus happened to be in Jerusalem, sent out as Saturninus's successor in the governorship of Syria, and he had come in person to advise Herod on the troubles now pressing him, at Herod's own request. While they sat in council, Antipater arrived, no one having told him anything. He entered the palace still wearing his purple robes; the men at the doors received him but kept his friends out. He was already visibly disturbed, sensing where he had come, since when he approached to greet his father, his father thrust him away, charging him with the murder of his brothers and with plotting his own death, and declaring that Varus would hear and judge the whole matter the next day.

Overwhelmed by the sheer weight of this disaster, both hearing of it and finding it already upon him, he went off; his mother and his wife met him — she was by now the daughter of Antigonus, who had reigned over the Jews before Herod — and from them, learning everything, he set about preparing for the contest to come.

The next day Varus and the king sat together in council, and the friends of both were called in, along with the king's relatives and his sister Salome, and also anyone who was going to give evidence, together with those who had already been put to torture — including the slaves of Antipater's mother, who had been seized shortly before his arrival while carrying a letter whose substance was: do not come back, since everything has come to my father's knowledge, and your only refuge left is Caesar — and along with that refuge, escaping falling into your father's hands.

When Antipater threw himself at his father's knees and begged that judgment not be settled beforehand, but that he be given a hearing and be allowed to remain unharmed at his father's side while it took place, Herod ordered him led out into the middle of the assembly, and himself lamented over his sons — the fate that fell to him before he could recover from his earlier hostility toward Antipater — describing the upbringing and education he had given them, and the abundant wealth he had placed at their disposal at every turn, as they might wish; and yet none of this had stood in the way of his own perishing at their plotting, in their eagerness to seize the kingdom by wicked means sooner than the law of nature would bring it to them by his own prayer and by justice.

He said he marveled at Antipater — on what hope had he been emboldened, that he pressed on to such deeds without turning back? For he, Herod, had by writing declared him successor to the throne; and while he still lived, Antipater fell short of him in nothing — neither in the visible marks of rank nor in the exercise of power — receiving fifty talents a year in revenue, and having been given, as a gift for his journey to Rome, the sum of three hundred talents. He charged him further, concerning his brothers: if they had truly been wicked, Antipater had become their imitator in his accusation of them; but if the charges he brought against them had been empty, then he was bringing this same kind of ruin down upon his own kinsman. For he had learned everything, with no exception, only through Antipater's own information, and had acted against them entirely on Antipater's judgment — and now Antipater sought to absolve them of every wrong and make himself the heir of a father's murder in their stead. Saying this, Herod broke down in tears and could no longer speak.

Nicolaus of Damascus, who was a friend of the king and shared in all his affairs, and who was familiar with the manner in which everything had been carried out, spoke next at the king's request, laying out the rest — all that concerned the proofs and the cross-examinations. When Antipater turned to make his defense to his father, going through all the instances of his goodwill toward him, and bringing forward the honors that had been his, which, he argued, could never have come to him had he not shown himself worthy of them by his virtue — for whatever needed to be foreseen, he had thought through prudently in advance, and whatever required action, he had carried out entirely by his own labor — it was not likely, he said, that his father, having chosen him out from all other plots against himself, would then set him up as a plotter, blotting out the very virtue for which he had been commended, in favor of a wickedness that was supposed to accompany it.

And yet, he said, though he had already been named successor and was to share in the honors that presently stood to him, nothing had been forbidden him; it was not likely that a man who possessed the half of everything safely and with honor would reach for the whole through blame and danger, especially one who had witnessed the punishment of his brothers, and who, though he could have kept silent and remained unnoticed, had instead become their informer and accuser — only later to become their punisher once they were shown openly to be wicked toward their father. These, he said, were the proofs of his own conduct here in Judea, offered as examples of one who had acted with unmixed loyalty toward his father; and as for what had happened in Rome, Caesar himself was witness that it was not possible to deceive him, any more than it was possible to deceive God — and proof of this lay in the letters Caesar himself had sent.

It was not right, Antipater argued, that the slanders of those bent on stirring up trouble should carry more weight simply because most of them had been put together during his absence, once his enemies had gained the leisure that his presence would never have allowed them. He also discredited the use of torture as a source of falsehood, since compulsion by its nature teaches those under it to say mostly what will please their examiners — and he offered himself up for torture. At this the council's mood shifted, for they deeply pitied Antipater as he wept and disfigured his own face with grief, so that even his enemies were moved to pity, and it became plain that Herod himself was wavering in his judgment, though he did not want this to show.

Nicolaus then rose and took up again, at greater length, the very points with which the king had begun, driving them home even more forcefully, and laying out all that the tortures and the testimonies together had gathered as proof of the charge. Above all he dwelt at length on the king's own virtue, which, however he had applied it to the upbringing and education of his sons, had nowhere found any benefit from it, stumbling instead from one son to another. Yet he said he did not so much wonder at the recklessness of the earlier sons — young men, after all, corrupted by the wickedness of their advisers, eager to lay hold of power before nature's own claims permitted it — but that one ought rightly to be struck with horror at the madness of Antipater, who had not been softened even by the many benefits he had received from his father, his reasoning as unyielding as the most venomous of serpents — creatures in which some softness at least sometimes arises against wronging their benefactors — nor had even the fate of his brothers stood in his way, to keep him from imitating their cruelty. "And yet, Antipater," he said, "of your brothers' crimes, whatever they dared, you yourself were both informer and investigator of the proofs and punisher of what was uncovered. We do not fault you for the anger you showed then, which was not lacking; what has struck us with horror is that you were eager to imitate their very depravity — finding that these things too were done by you, not for your father's safety, but for your brothers' destruction, so that by your hatred of their wickedness you might be believed devoted to your father, and so gain a freer hand to work evil against him yourself — which indeed you demonstrated by your deeds. For at the very moment you were destroying your brothers for the wrongs you had exposed in them, you did not hand over those who had acted with them, making it plain to all that you had made a pact with your brothers against your father and then turned to accusing them, wishing to keep for yourself alone the profit of the plot to kill your father, and to reap the enjoyment of two contests at once, in a manner worthy of your own character: open in the case against your brothers, in which you even gloried as though in the greatest of achievements — and it would have been fitting to think so, had you not in fact been the worse offender — but hidden in the plot you formed against your father together with them, whom you did not hate as men who had plotted against your father — for you would never have gone so far as a like act with them — but rather because you thought them more rightful heirs to your rule than yourself; and hidden too in your intent to slaughter your father alongside your brothers, so that you might sooner escape exposure for having falsely accused them, and might exact from your unfortunate father the very penalty that you yourself deserved to pay, devising a parricide unlike any other, one such as human life has not recorded until now. For you were plotting not merely as a son against a father, but against one who loved you and had done you good, having been made partner in the kingdom in deed and declared successor in the open, allowed already to enjoy the pleasure of power beforehand without hindrance, and secured besides in your hope for the future by your father's own resolve and by his written word. But it was not, after all, by Herod's virtue that your affairs were governed — it was by your own judgment and your own wickedness, wishing to take away even the share belonging to a father who obeyed you in everything, and seeking in deed to destroy the very man you pretended in word to be saving — and not content with making yourself alone wicked, you filled your mother too with your schemes, stirring up faction against the goodwill your brothers deserved, and daring to call your father a wild beast, having fashioned in yourself a mind more savage than any serpent, with which you incited their poison against your nearest kin and against the very benefactors who had done so much for you, arming yourself against the old man with alliances of guards and the arts of men and women alike — as though your own intention were not sufficient to make plain the hatred lurking within you. And now you have come, after the torture of free household servants turned slaves for your sake, to contest the very disclosures of your fellow conspirators, straining against the truth, having all but plotted to remove your father from the ranks of humankind, and now defying even the law written against you, the virtue of Varus, and the very nature of justice — so confident are you in your shamelessness that you even ask to be put to torture yourself, and call the tortures of those examined before you false, so that those who would save your father might be barred from having spoken the truth, while your own tortures might seem trustworthy? Will you not, Varus, rescue the king from the malice of his own kin? Will you not see this wicked beast, who feigned love for his father to destroy his brothers, and who, once he was alone and about to seize the kingdom swiftly, would have shown himself the deadliest of all men to his father as well? He knows that parricide is a crime common to nature and to human life alike, and that whoever fails to punish it wrongs nature no less than the one who plotted it."

Nicolaus went on to add the matter of Antipater's mother — all the things she had said to certain people out of womanish idle talk, the divinations and sacrifices performed against the king, and all the debauchery that had gone on between Antipater and Pheroras's wives, amid wine and erotic mischief, together with the examinations under torture and whatever bore on the testimonies. Much of this, of every kind, had been prepared beforehand, and some of it had been discovered only shortly before it was reported and confirmed; for people, even if they had something to say out of fear of Antipater, kept silent so long as he might, by escaping, take revenge on them — but now, seeing him exposed to the accusations of those who had begun them, and seeing the great good fortune that had once attended him openly handed over to his enemies, who glutted themselves insatiably on their hatred of him, they came forward eagerly — not out of hostility toward the man bringing the charges, but overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the wickedness he had devised and the enmity he bore toward his father and brothers, having filled the household with faction and mutual destruction, treating neither hatred with justice nor friendship with true goodwill, but only as either might serve his own advantage at the time.

All of this had long been foreseen by most of those best able to judge matters by virtue, precisely because they were free of anger in casting their judgment on events; men who had been kept from voicing their complaints before, now that the opportunity had come, brought out into the open everything they knew. The proofs of his wickedness were of every kind, and none of them could be charged with falsehood, since the greater number of those speaking did so neither out of goodwill toward Herod nor out of fear of danger silencing what they had to say, but because they genuinely believed the state of affairs to be wicked, and Antipater deserving of every punishment — not for Herod's safety, but for his own depravity. Much, too, was said by many who had not even been instructed to speak, so that Antipater, for all his consummate skill at lying and his shamelessness, could not muster strength enough even to raise his voice in reply. When Nicolaus had finished both his speech and his cross-examinations, Varus ordered Antipater to proceed to his defense against the charges, if he had any means of showing himself not liable to what was brought against him — for he himself, Varus said, wished, as Herod did, to find him guilty of nothing.

But Antipater lay face down, turned toward God, laying before all present his plea that whatever might bear witness that he had done no wrong should come forward, or else that he might be shown by clear proofs not to have plotted against his father. All men who fall short in virtue are accustomed, whenever they set their hand to some wrongdoing, to shut out the divine presence that attends everyone and to proceed on their own judgment alone; but whenever, once exposed, they stand in danger of paying the penalty, they turn everything aside by appealing to God as their witness. This is exactly what had happened to Antipater: having carried out everything as though God were absent from it all, and now with the case closing in on him from every side, with no other grounds of defense left by which he might clear himself of the charges, he once again presumed upon the virtue of God, invoking his testimony as to his own power, until he had brought before the assembly all that he had not failed to dare against his father. Varus, when he had questioned Antipater repeatedly and found nothing more than his appeal to God,

Varus, seeing that the business would go on forever, ordered the poison brought into the assembly so he could see how much potency it still had. It was brought in, and one of the men condemned to death drank it at Varus's command and died on the spot. Varus then rose and left the council, and the next day set out for Antioch, where in fact he spent most of his time, since Antioch was the seat of Roman government for Syria.

Herod for the moment simply had his son bound. What Varus had said to him in their private conversation, and what he had said as he left, remained unknown to most people. It was generally guessed that Herod was acting on Varus's advice in everything he did concerning Antipater. He kept his son in chains and sent letters about him to Rome, to Caesar, along with men to instruct Caesar by word of mouth in Antipater's wickedness, and Coponius carried Caesar's own opinion of the matter.

About the same time a letter written by Antiphilus to Antipater was intercepted. Antiphilus himself was staying in Egypt. When the king had it opened, it read: "I have sent you the letter from Acme, risking my own life to do it; for you know that I am now in danger from two households, if I should be found out. I wish you good fortune in the matter." That was the substance of the letter.

The king also wanted the other letter, but it was not to be found, and Antiphilus's slave, who had carried the one that had been read, denied having received any other. While the king was at a loss, one of Herod's friends noticed that the inner tunic of the slave had been sewn up — for he was wearing two — and guessed that the letter was hidden inside the fold. This proved to be so. They took the letter, and in it was written the following:

"Acme to Antipater. I have written to your father the sort of letter you wanted, and I made a copy in the form of a letter as though from Salome to my mistress, which I know she will punish Salome for when she reads it, as a plot against her." The letter purporting to be from Salome to her mistress had in fact been dictated by Antipater under Salome's name, saying whatever suited his purpose, though composed in Acme's own words. What was written was this: "Acme to King Herod. Making it my business that nothing done against you should escape your notice, I found a letter from Salome to my mistress written against you, and I have copied it out at risk to myself but for your benefit, and I send it to you.

Salome wrote it because she wants to marry Syllaeus. Tear up this letter, then, so that I too do not come to risk my life over it." And to Antipater himself she had written, explaining that, acting on his instructions, she had both written to Herod as though Salome were plotting entirely against him, and had sent him a copy of the letter supposedly addressed by Salome to her mistress.

Now Acme was Jewish by birth and a slave of Julia, Caesar's wife, and she did this out of friendship for Antipater, having been bought by him with a large sum of money to help him work mischief against his father and his aunt. Herod, appalled at the magnitude of Antipater's wickedness, was moved at once to have him killed outright, as a man who had stirred up such great troubles,

and who had plotted not only against him but against his own sister, and had corrupted the household of Caesar. Salome too, beating her breast, urged him on and demanded that Antipater be put to death, if any charge weighty enough for such a course could be made good. Herod sent for his son and questioned him, telling him to say whatever he had to say in his own defense without holding anything back; and when Antipater remained speechless,

Herod asked him — since he had by now been exposed as wicked in every particular — at least not to delay in naming those who had shared in his crimes. Antipater laid the whole blame on Antiphilus and put forward no one else. Herod, in deep distress, resolved to send his son to Rome to Caesar to answer for his schemes, but then, fearing that with the help of friends he might find some way to escape the danger, he kept him instead a prisoner as before,

and sent envoys and letters accusing his son, listing everything Acme had done to help him, along with copies of the letters. The envoys hurried to Rome, having been thoroughly instructed in what they should say when questioned and carrying the documents with them. Meanwhile the king fell ill and drew up a will,

leaving the kingdom to his youngest son, out of the hatred he now bore toward Archelaus and Philip because of Antipater's slanders; and he left Caesar a thousand talents, and Caesar's wife Julia, his children, and his freedmen five hundred. He also distributed money, revenues, and estates among his sons and their sons, and enriched his sister Salome greatly,

since she had remained loyal to him throughout and had never ventured to do him wrong. Despairing now of recovery — for he was about seventy years old — he grew savage, giving free rein to unrestrained anger and bitterness in everything, the cause being his sense that he was held in contempt and that the nation took pleasure in his misfortunes; and all the more because some of the more popular sort of men had actually risen up against him,

for a reason of the following kind. There were two men, Judas son of Sariphaeus and Matthias son of Margalothus, the most learned of the Jews and unrivaled interpreters of the ancestral laws, men beloved by the people for the instruction they gave to the young; for every day crowds who cultivated a reputation for virtue spent their time with them. When they learned that the king's illness was incurable, they roused the younger men,

urging that whatever works had been set up by the king contrary to the ancestral law should be pulled down, and that this would be a feat of piety on the law's behalf; for indeed it was because of his daring against what the law prescribed for such construction that everything else had befallen him — the departures from what was customary for a man in his position, and above all his illness. For Herod had built certain things contrary to the law, which Judas and his companions kept denouncing.

The king had set up above the great gate of the temple a dedication, a very costly one — a great golden eagle. But the law forbids setting up images or making dedications of any living creature for those who choose to live by it. So the sophists urged that the eagle be pulled down, saying that even if there were danger in it for those who undertook the deed,

the virtue thereby added — for those who would die in the safeguarding and defense of the ancestral law — would prove far more profitable than the pleasure of living, since they would win an undying reputation, praised now and remembered forever by those to come, and would leave life memorable. Even those who lived free of danger, they said, could not escape misfortune in the end,

so that it was well for men who reached after virtue to accept their appointed death with praise and honor and so depart from life; for it brought great relief that death should come while engaged in noble deeds, whose reward the danger itself would be, and at the same time they would leave their sons and whatever kinsmen, men and women, survived them, a benefit in the good repute that would come from it.

With such arguments they roused the young men. Word reached them that the king had died, and this too spurred on the sophists' plan. So at midday they went up and pulled down the eagle and hacked it to pieces with axes, while a great many people were about in the temple. The king's captain, when the attempt was reported to him,

suspecting a larger design than what was actually being carried out, went up with a large force, as many as could withstand the crowd of those attempting to tear down the dedication, and fell upon them unprepared — for, as a mob is apt to do, they had ventured the deed on rash confidence rather than sound foresight, in disorder and without any plan for their own safety.

No fewer than forty of the young men, who stood their ground boldly as he attacked while the rest of the crowd fled, were taken, along with the instigators of the deed, Judas and Matthias, who thought it beneath them to retreat before his onset; and he brought them up before the king.

When they arrived before him, the king asked whether they had dared to pull down his dedication. "Yes," they said, "and what we resolved and did was done with a virtue most fitting for men; for we have come to the defense of God's honor, and we have obeyed what the law demands. It is no wonder,

then, if we judged that the laws which Moses left behind, written at God's dictation and teaching, deserved to be observed above your decrees. We will bear death, and whatever punishment you impose, gladly, since we are to suffer it not for unjust deeds but out of love for what is pious." All of them spoke in this way, with no less boldness in their words

than they had shown daring in doing the deed. The king had them bound and sent for the leading men of the Jews to come to Jericho, and when they had arrived he convened an assembly in the theater there, lying on a couch because he was too weak to stand. He recounted at length all that he had done for them,

and how the temple had been built at great expense to him — something the Hasmoneans, in the hundred and twenty-five years of their reign, had not been able to accomplish in honor of God — and how he had adorned it besides with dedications worth speaking of. Because of this, he said, he had hoped that even after his death he would leave behind a memory and good repute. Yet already, he cried out, they had not even refrained from insulting him while he still lived,

but in broad daylight and before the eyes of the multitude had laid hands, in outrage, on what he had dedicated, and had made its destruction itself an act of insult — in word aimed at him, but in truth, if one examined what had actually happened, an act of sacrilege. The men, fearing that in his savage anger he would exact vengeance on them as well, said that the deed had not been done with their consent,

and that in their judgment it did not deserve to go unpunished. Herod dealt more gently with the rest, but removed Matthias the high priest from his office, holding him responsible for that portion of the affair, and appointed Joazar, his own wife's brother, high priest in his place. During the term of this Matthias's priesthood it happened that another man served as high priest for a single day — the day the Jews observe as a fast.

The reason was this: Matthias, while serving as priest, on the night leading into the day on which the fast was to begin, dreamed that he had had intercourse with a woman, and because of this, being unable to perform the sacred rites, Joseph son of Ellemus, his kinsman, served as priest in his place. Herod had by then removed both this Matthias from the high priesthood and the other Matthias, who had stirred up the revolt, and had certain of his companions burned alive. And on that same night the moon was eclipsed.

Herod's illness now grew ever more bitter, as God exacted from him the penalty for his lawless deeds; for the fever that consumed him was mild, and gave no outward sign of the burning it was inflicting within. There was, besides, a terrible craving to take some food, which could not be denied him, and ulceration of the bowels, especially severe pains in the colon,

a moist, transparent swelling about his feet, a similar inflammation of the abdomen, and indeed decay of his genitals producing worms, together with a straining difficulty in breathing that was itself most distressing, both for the offensiveness of the odor and for the labored quickness of the breath; convulsions seized every part of his body, adding a strength beyond what could be borne. It was said, then, by

those who make it their business to foretell such things by their skill, that God was exacting this penalty from the king for his great impiety. Yet, suffering more than anyone could be expected to endure, he still clung to hope of recovery; he kept sending for physicians and did not refuse to try whatever remedies they suggested, and he crossed the Jordan and gave himself over to the hot springs at Callirrhoe, waters which,

besides their other virtues, are also fit to drink; this water flows out into the lake called the Asphalt Lake. There the physicians thought to warm him, and he was let down into a tub full of oil, which gave them the impression that he was fading away. When his servants cried out in lamentation, he recovered himself, and having no hope left of surviving, he ordered fifty drachmas to be distributed to each of the soldiers, and gave lavish gifts

to their officers as well and to his own friends. He then came back to Jericho, where a black bile now seized him and inflamed him with rage against everyone, so that in the end he devised the following scheme: by his own order he summoned Jewish men of standing from the whole nation, wherever any were of note; and a great many came, since the whole nation had in effect been summoned and all had heard the proclamation, for

death was appointed for those who disregarded the letters, the king being now enraged indiscriculously against innocent and guilty alike. Having shut them all up in the hippodrome, he sent for his sister Salome and her husband Alexas and told them he would soon die, given how far his sufferings had already advanced; "and this," he said, "is bearable, and welcome to everyone —

but what troubles me most is that there will be no mourning fit for it, no grief such as should attend a king's death. For I know well enough the mind of the Jews: my death will be a thing prayed for and altogether welcome to them, since even while I live they have been eager for rebellion and for insulting what I have set up. It falls to you, then, to grant me some relief from so bitter a grief,

if you are willing to act as I resolve: let my funeral be a great one, such as no other king's has ever been, and let there be mourning through the whole nation, grief poured out from the heart, in place of the joy and laughter they feel at my death. When, then, you see that I have breathed my last, surround the hippodrome with the soldiers before my death has been made known to the crowd,

and do not announce it to the people before this is done: give orders that the men shut up here be shot down with javelins, and that all of them, killed in this way, ensure that I do not go, on two counts, without something to gladden me — by the fulfillment of the commands I give you as I am dying, and by being honored with a mourning worth remembering." And he, weeping, entreated them, calling on the loyalty of kinship and the faith owed to God, and charged them

insisting that he not be dishonored, and the guards promised they would not fail him. One can see the man's cast of mind and what pleased him from the start: that it was love of life, not affection for his kin, that had driven his actions toward them, since not even in his final letters is anything humane expressed. Even as he was leaving life he took care that the whole nation should be plunged into mourning and desolation for their dearest, ordering one man to be seized from every house—men who had done him no wrong and against whom no other charge had been laid—simply because it is the custom of people, when a pretense of virtue serves them, to lay aside their hatreds toward those who have justly become their enemies at such a time.

While he was dictating these instructions to his kinsmen, letters arrived from the envoys who had been sent to Rome, to Caesar. When they were read out, the substance was this: Acme had been put to death by Caesar's anger for her complicity with Antipater, and as for Antipater himself, Caesar left it to Herod's own judgment, as father and king, whether he wished to drive him into exile or to have him killed. Hearing this, Herod for a moment rallied, cheered by the news and elated at the death of Acme and at the power now granted him over his son's punishment; but then, his pains having grown very great, he fainted from the exhaustion of having gone without food. He asked for an apple and a small knife, for it was his habit, as before, to peel it himself and eat it cut into small pieces. Taking it and looking about him, he resolved to stab himself, and he would have done it had not his cousin Achiab rushed forward and caught his hand. At this a great cry went up, and at once there was wailing throughout the palace and a great uproar, as though the king had died.

Antipater, believing that his father had truly reached his end, took heart at the report and behaved as one already about to be freed from his chains and to receive the kingdom into his hands without a struggle; he entered into conversation with his jailer about his release, promising him great rewards both now and later, since the contest, as he saw it, was now at hand. But the jailer not only refused to do what Antipater asked, but reported his intentions to the king, adding embellishments of his own. Herod, who even before had not been won over by affection for his son, on hearing what the jailer told him cried out, raising his head though he lay at the point of death, and propping himself on his elbow he ordered one of his guards to be sent at once, without delay, to kill Antipater and bury him without honor at Hyrcania.

He then rewrote his will once more, his mind having undergone a change: he made Antipas, to whom he had before left the kingdom, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea instead; he granted the kingdom to Archelaus; Gaulanitis, Trachonitis, Batanaea, and Panias he made into a tetrarchy for Philip, his son and Archelaus's full brother; and Jamnia, Azotus, and Phasaelis he assigned to his sister Salome, together with five hundred thousand silver drachmas. He made provision also for the rest of his kinsmen, establishing each of them in comfort with gifts of money and grants of revenue. To Caesar he left ten million silver drachmas, besides vessels of gold and silver and clothing of very great value, and to Julia, Caesar's wife, and to certain others, five million.

Having done this, he died on the fifth day after he had put his son Antipater to death, having reigned thirty-four years from the time he killed Antigonus, and thirty-seven from the time the Romans had declared him king—a man harsh to all alike, less a slave to anger than a master of justice, and favored by fortune, if ever a man was, beyond all others. For from a private citizen he rose to be king, and though hemmed in by countless dangers he escaped them all and attained an extraordinarily long life. As for his domestic affairs concerning his sons, whatever came of his own judgment he managed with great shrewdness, since he never failed to prevail over those he judged his enemies—though to my mind he was in this respect a most unfortunate man.

Before the king's death became known, Salome and Alexas sent away those who had been shut up in the hippodrome, each to his own affairs, telling them that the king ordered them to go off to their farms and manage their own property; and by this they did the nation the greatest service. When the king's death was at last made public, Salome and Alexas gathered the soldiers into the amphitheater at Jericho, and first read out a letter written to the soldiers thanking them for their loyalty and goodwill toward him, and urging them to show the same steadfast support to his son Archelaus, whom he had appointed king. Next Ptolemy, who had been entrusted with the king's signet, read out the will, which was not to take legal effect until Caesar had examined it. At once there was a shout acclaiming Archelaus king, and the soldiers, company by company, together with their officers, promised him their loyalty and zeal, and called on God to be his helper.

After this they prepared the king's burial, Archelaus being anxious that his father's funeral procession should be of the utmost splendor, and he brought forth every ornament to accompany the corpse. The body was carried upon a golden bier studded with precious stones of many colors; the coverlet was of purple, and the corpse itself was clothed in purple robes and adorned with a diadem, over which lay a golden crown, and a scepter rested by the right hand. Around the bier walked his sons and the multitude of his kinsmen, and after them the soldiers, arranged by their national units or designations: first the guards, then the Thracian contingent, then all the Germans, and after them the Gauls, all in full battle array. Behind these followed the whole army, marching out as if to war, led by their captains and company commanders. Following them came five hundred of the household servants carrying spices. They went to Herodium, a distance of eight stadia, for it was there, by his own command, that he was buried.

Such was the manner of Herod's death. Archelaus, for seven days, continued to observe mourning for his father, that being the number the custom of the country prescribes. Then, having given the people a feast and ended the mourning, he went up to the Temple. There were shouts of acclaim and praise wherever he passed, each group vying with the others to make its acclamations seem the grandest. Mounting a high platform that had been built for him and taking his seat on a golden throne, he greeted the crowds in turn, receiving their goodwill with evident delight, and thanked them, saying that he bore them no grudge for whatever wrongs his father had done them, and that he would strive to repay their zeal without stinting. For the present, however, he said he would refrain from taking the title of king, for he would be honored with that dignity only once Caesar had confirmed the will his father had drawn up; that was also why, when the army at Jericho had been eager to set the diadem on his head, he had declined to accept that coveted honor, since the one properly empowered to bestow it had not yet made himself known. If matters turned out in his favor, he said, he would not fall short in virtue in repaying their goodwill, for in everything he would strive to show himself better toward them in every way than his father had been.

The crowd, as a crowd is wont to do, supposing that the first days revealed the true intentions of those entering upon such offices, the more mildly and courteously Archelaus spoke to them, the more extravagant their praises became, and they proceeded to make requests for favors: some cried out for relief from the annual taxes they paid, others for the release of the prisoners who had been bound by Herod, of whom there were many, and some who had been so for a long time. Still others demanded the abolition of the duties levied harshly on sales and purchases. Archelaus in no way opposed them, being eager, in his zeal, to please the crowds in everything, since he reckoned that winning the people's goodwill would greatly help him secure his rule. After this he sacrificed to God and turned to feasting with his friends.

Meanwhile some of the Jews, moved by a desire for revolution, gathered to mourn Matthias and those put to death with him by Herod—men who had at once been deprived, out of fear of Herod, of the honor of being mourned, these being the men condemned for pulling down the golden eagle. Raising a great outcry and lamentation, and thinking to gain some relief for the dead, they hurled reproaches at the king. When they had assembled together, they demanded that Archelaus punish those whom Herod had honored, and above all and most conspicuously that he depose the man Herod had made high priest and choose in his place a man more lawfully qualified and pure to hold the high priesthood. Archelaus, though deeply displeased by this, restrained his anger toward them because of the journey to Rome he had before him, which he needed to undertake quickly to look after the matters awaiting Caesar's decision.

He sent his general to try persuasion, urging them to abandon such folly and consider that the deaths of their friends had come about under the law, that their demands were rapidly heading toward outrage, and that the present circumstances were not suited to such matters—rather this was a time for harmony, until, once he had settled his rule with Caesar's approval, he should return to them; for then he would deliberate jointly with them about whatever they thought right, but for now they should hold back, lest they appear to be fomenting sedition. Having said this and instructed the general accordingly, Archelaus sent him out to them. But they, shouting, would not let him speak, and put both him and any others who might, for the sake of restraint and to turn them from such aims, dare to speak in danger of being killed, since they were resolved to yield to their own desire rather than to the authority of those set over them, thinking it monstrous that while Herod lived they had been deprived of their dearest ones, and now that he was dead they were denied vengeance for what had been done to them—their tempers inflamed, and holding whatever was likely to bring them satisfaction to be both lawful and just, while being too ignorant to foresee the danger it entailed, and if anyone warned them of it, the immediate pleasure of avenging themselves on those they took to be their worst enemies overrode all caution.

Many were sent by Archelaus to reason with them, both men presently in office under him and others who, though seeming to come on their own judgment, in fact came at his direction, in order to bring them to a gentler mood, but they would not tolerate hearing a word from anyone. There was an uprising, fueled by anger, and it was clear they intended to swell the sedition still further as the crowd streamed in to join them.

Now at this time the festival was at hand at which it is customary for the Jews to set out unleavened bread; they call the festival Passover, since it is a memorial of their departure from Egypt, and they sacrifice it eagerly, with a greater number of victims than at any other festival, as their custom requires. Countless throngs come down from the countryside, and by now from beyond the borders as well, to worship God, and the agitators, mourning for Judas and Matthias, their expounders of the law, gathered in the Temple, being well supplied with food for the rebels, since it was not thought shameful for them to beg it. Archelaus, fearing that some terrible outcome might grow out of their desperation, sent a cohort of soldiers under a tribune to check their impulse before the whole crowd was carried further into their madness, and to bring before him any who stood out conspicuously above the rest in their zeal for rebellion. At this the agitators among the expounders and the crowd were roused to still greater fury, shouting and calling to one another, and rushed upon the soldiers, surrounding them and stoning most of them to death; only a few, along with the tribune, escaped, wounded.

Once they had done this, they turned again to their sacrifice, as though their hands were clean. Archelaus, thinking it impossible to preserve order in any way without crushing this impulse of the crowd, sent out his whole army, ordering part of it to prevent those camped nearby from going to the aid of the men at the Temple, and part to receive those driven out by the infantry, once they were confident of having reached safety. The cavalry killed as many as three thousand men; the rest made their way off to the nearby hills. Archelaus proclaimed that all should return to their homes, and they departed, abandoning the festival, in fear of a still greater disaster, bold as they were only through lack of discipline.

Archelaus then went down to the coast together with his mother, taking with him Nicolaus, Ptolemy, and Ptolla among his friends, and leaving Philip his brother in charge of managing everything in the household and the government. Salome, Herod's sister, also went out with him, bringing her own children, and many of his kinsmen went too, ostensibly to support Archelaus in securing the kingdom, but in reality to work against him, and above all to bring accusations against him for what had happened at the Temple. Sabinus, Caesar's procurator of affairs in Syria, who had set out for Judea to safeguard Herod's property, met Archelaus at Caesarea. But Varus, arriving on the scene, restrained him from his intended course, for he had come at Archelaus's summons, through Ptolemy. To oblige Varus, Sabinus neither took possession of the strongholds in Judea nor sealed up the treasuries, but allowed Archelaus to keep them until Caesar should decide something concerning them, and he remained at Caesarea, having given this undertaking.

But once Archelaus had sailed for Rome and Varus had gone on to Antioch, Sabinus made his way to Jerusalem and took possession of the palace. Summoning the garrison commanders and all who were in charge of affairs, he made it clear that he intended to demand an account from them and to install the strongholds as he saw fit. The guards, however, did not treat Archelaus's instructions lightly, but held firm, preserving everything as they had been ordered, their pretense to Caesar being that they were merely guarding it all. At this same time Antipas, another son of Herod, was also sailing for Rome to press his own claim

Antipas too, Herod's son, was sailing to Rome at this same time, roused by Salome's promises to contend for the throne, and reckoning it far more just that he, not Archelaus, should take over the government, since by the earlier will he had been declared king, and that will, he held, was more secure than the one substituted for it. He brought with him his mother, and Ptolemy, Nicolaus's brother, who had been Herod's most honored friend and remained devoted to him. But the man who most spurred him on to contest the kingdom was Irenaeus the orator, a man trusted with the kingdom's cause because of his reputed cleverness. For this reason he would not yield to those who urged him to give way to Archelaus, as the elder brother and the one named king in the later will by their father.

When he reached Rome, all his kinsmen went over to his side—not out of goodwill toward him, but out of hatred for Archelaus. What they wanted above all was freedom, to be placed under a Roman governor; but failing that, they judged Antipas the lesser evil compared with Archelaus, and so they worked with Antipas for the kingship. Sabinus meanwhile sent letters to Caesar accusing Archelaus. And when Archelaus in turn had sent letters to Caesar setting out his claims, together with his father's will and the accounts of Herod's money brought by Ptolemy along with the royal seal, Caesar waited to see what would come of it. Once he had read these documents, as well as the letters of Varus and Sabinus concerning the sums of money and the annual revenue, and all that Antipas had written seeking to secure the kingdom for himself, he called his friends together to deliberate, among them Gaius, the son of Agrippa and of his own daughter Julia, whom he had adopted and now seated first, and he bade those who wished to speak on the matters at hand do so.

Antipater, Salome's son, spoke first—a most formidable speaker and the bitterest opponent of Archelaus. He said that Archelaus's talk of kingship was mere pretense, since in fact he had already exercised its power before Caesar had granted him anything, charging him with the outrages committed against those who died at the festival. Even if those men had been guilty of some wrong, the punishment belonged properly to those with authority to use it against outsiders, not to a private man—for if a king had done it, he would still be doing wrong by using Caesar's own prerogative of judgment before it had been granted him; and if a mere commoner had done it, the offense was far worse, since it was not fitting for one merely laying claim to a kingdom to have been allowed such license, seeing that he was thereby stripping Caesar of the very authority over such matters.

He attacked him too over the removal of certain officers in the army, over his taking a seat on the royal throne, over settling lawsuits as though he were already king, over granting the petitions of public suitors, and over managing everything—none of which, he said, could possibly be imagined as done by a man merely appointed by Caesar to his position. He also credited him with releasing the prisoners from the hippodrome, and with much else, some of it true and some merely plausible, since it is natural for such things to be believed of young men who seize power out of ambition to rule, and of the neglect of mourning for a father, and revels held the very night of his death—circumstances which, he said, gave the populace their first occasion to riot, since it was outrageous that a father who had done him such benefits and thought him worthy of so much should be repaid for his corpse in such a fashion: pretending to weep by day like an actor on a stage, while by night he indulged in all the pleasure that power could give.

And Archelaus, he said, would show himself the same before Caesar in seeking to be granted the kingdom as he had shown himself toward his father—dancing and singing as if an enemy had fallen, not a kinsman who had raised him to such benefits. Worst of all, he declared, was that Archelaus now came before Caesar to seek confirmation of a kingship all of whose privileges he had already arranged for himself beforehand, treating as already secured what ought only to be exercised once the emperor himself had firmly granted it. Above all he made much of the slaughter at the temple and its impiety—how, with the festival under way and while the sacrificial victims were being slain in the customary manner, some strangers and some natives alike were cut down, and the temple filled with corpses, not by some foreign hand, but by the very man who, even while pursuing the kingship under lawful pretexts, sought thereby to satisfy that injustice hated by all men which is the nature of tyranny.

For this reason, he said, not even in a dream should the succession to the kingdom by right of his father come to him: for he knew the man's character, and indeed a more formidable enemy than himself had been set against him by the terms of the will—Antipater—for he had been summoned by his father to the kingship not while his father was diseased in mind as well as body, but while he still used sound judgment, and while bodily strength still governed his affairs. And if the father had earlier disposed of things toward him just as he had now, it would show plainly what kind of king he would prove: one who, while Caesar alone held the right to bestow the kingdom and had been robbed of the power to grant it, was nevertheless, while still a private citizen, cutting down his fellow citizens in the temple without restraint. Having said such things, and having supported his charges with the testimony of many of the kinsmen, Antipater ceased speaking.

Then Nicolaus rose on behalf of Archelaus, and said that what had happened in the temple should be attributed to the intent of those who suffered rather than to any authority exercised by Archelaus; for men in command in such matters are guilty of wrongdoing not only when they themselves commit outrage, but also when they compel those inclined to act reasonably to resort to self-defense. And that the men in question had acted as if in open war, ostensibly against Archelaus but in reality, it was plain, against Caesar himself; for those who came as restrainers of the outrage, or who were sent by Archelaus and were attacked and killed while giving no thought to God or to the law of the festival—of these men Antipater was not ashamed to make himself the avenger, out of service to his own hatred for Archelaus rather than from any natural love of justice. It was those who came forward, and not those minded to do injustice, who were the rulers; it was the ones who used force, and forced those unwilling to defend themselves to take up arms, who were truly at fault.

He laid the rest of the blame likewise on all those in council with the accusers; for nothing had been done that was not accompanied by their own approval, and thus the charge of wrongdoing applied to them—not that these acts were by nature evil in themselves, but that they seemed likely to damage Archelaus. So great, he said, was their eagerness to insult a man who was their kinsman, the son of a benefactor father, and one who had always dealt with them familiarly and as a fellow citizen. As for the will, it had been written by a king in full possession of his senses, and it took precedence over the earlier one, since the judgment on what was written in it had been left to Caesar, master of all things. And Caesar would in no way imitate their insolence—men who, having in every way enjoyed the benefits of Herod's power while he lived, now rushed with insulting intent against his memory, though not even they themselves had behaved so toward their kinsman. Surely Caesar, he said, would not overturn a will made in good faith toward a man who had done everything for him and was his friend and ally, nor imitate their wickedness—Caesar, whose virtue and good faith toward the whole world stood beyond all doubt—nor condemn as madness and derangement of judgment the act of a king who had left the succession to a worthy son and had thrown himself upon Caesar's own good faith; nor had Herod ever erred in his judgment of a successor, since he had always acted with sound judgment and left everything to Caesar's own decision. With these words Nicolaus concluded his speech.

Then Caesar raised up Archelaus, who had fallen at his knees, kindly, saying that he was most worthy of the kingdom, and he made it clear by many signs that his own inclination was to do nothing other than what the will prescribed and what would be advantageous to Archelaus. Nothing, however, was yet confirmed, as if Caesar wished to keep Archelaus, even with so favorable a precedent to rely on, still without full assurance. And once the men had been dismissed, he considered by himself whether the kingdom should be confirmed to Archelaus, or whether it should instead be divided among all of Herod's family, especially since all of them stood in need of much support.

But before any decision on these matters had been reached, Malthace, Archelaus's mother, died of illness, and letters arrived from Varus, governor of Syria, reporting the revolt of the Jews; for after Archelaus's departure the whole nation had fallen into turmoil. Varus himself, once he arrived, inflicted punishment on those responsible for the disturbance and checked much of the unrest, then withdrew to Antioch, leaving one legion of his army at Jerusalem to hold the Jews' revolutionary spirit in check. This, however, accomplished nothing toward putting an end to their rebelliousness. For once Varus had departed and Sabinus, Caesar's procurator, remained behind, he pressed hard upon the rebels, trusting in the troops left to him and confident that he would prevail through their numbers. He armed many of the men and used them as his bodyguard, driving the Jews on and provoking them to revolt; for he was determined to seize the fortresses by force and eagerly pursued a search for the royal treasures, driven by greed for profit and lust for gain.

When Pentecost arrived—a festival of ours so named by ancestral custom—the people gathered not only in observance of the rite but also in anger at the outrage and drunken insolence of Sabinus; tens of thousands assembled, a great many of them Galileans and Idumeans, and there was a multitude from Jericho and from those who dwell across the Jordan, and the Jews of the region itself gathered in numbers to join with all the rest, and were even more eager than the others to take vengeance on Sabinus. Dividing into three companies, they encamped in as many places: some occupied the hippodrome; of the remaining two groups, some turned toward the northern side of the temple facing south, while others held the eastern quarter; the third group held the western side, where the palace also stood. All of this was directed toward besieging the Romans, who found themselves shut in on every side.

Sabinus, fearing both their numbers and the temper of men who thought little of dying rather than yield, since they judged victory itself to be the very measure of courage, at once sent letters to Varus, urging him, as was his custom, to come to his aid with all speed, since the greatest danger surrounded the army left behind, for he expected it would not be long before they were cut down and taken. He himself, meanwhile, seized the highest of the towers of the fortress, called Phasael in honor of Herod's brother Phasael, who had been so named after his own death at the hands of the Parthians, and from there he urged the Romans to go out against the Jews, though he himself did not dare to go down even among his own friends, judging it right that others should die before him for the sake of his own greed.

When the Romans dared to sally out, a fierce battle broke out, and the Romans got the better of it in many engagements; yet the courage of the Jews did not fail at the sight of the danger, even though many of them had fallen. Circling around, they went up to the porticoes that ran along the outer wall of the temple enclosure, and since the fighting there was hard to press home, they hurled stones, some flung by hand, others slung, being practiced athletes in this kind of fighting. All the archers too, drawn up in formation, did great harm to the Romans, since they held the higher ground and were thus hard to attack, being beyond the reach of those who tried to cast javelins at them, while they themselves could more easily overcome their enemies. The battle continued in this fashion for a long time. Then the Romans, exasperated by what was being done to them, set fire to the porticoes,

catching unawares those of the Jews who had climbed up onto them. The fire, fed by many hands and joined by those skilled in kindling flame, quickly caught the roofing. Since the woodwork was coated with pitch and wax, and further overlaid with gold, the flame ran through it at once, and those great and most remarkable works were destroyed. A sudden and unexpected death overtook the men above the porticoes: some were carried down together with the collapsing roof, while others were struck down all around by the enemy as they stood; many, in their desperation for safety and terror at the calamity surrounding them, threw themselves into the fire, while others used their own swords to make an end of themselves. Those who tried to escape downward by the way they had climbed up were all killed by the Romans as they emerged,

naked as they were and broken in spirit, since desperation, lacking arms, could offer no help. Of those who had gone up onto the roof, not a single one survived. The Romans, forcing their way through wherever the fire allowed, seized control of the treasury, where the sacred funds were kept. Much of it was stolen away by the soldiers, but Sabinus openly kept back for himself four hundred talents.

The Jews were grieved by the loss of their friends who had fallen in this battle, and grieved too at the plundering of the votive offerings; yet the most warlike and closely bound portion of them, gathering around the palace, threatened to set fire to it and kill everyone inside unless they departed at once, promising safety to those who obeyed, and to Sabinus along with them. And most of the royal troops deserted to their side; but Rufus and Gratus, who commanded three thousand of the most warlike men in Herod's army, men vigorous in body, went over to the Romans. There was also a body of cavalry under Rufus's command, which likewise became an addition to the Roman force. The Jews, for their part, did not neglect the siege, but undermined the walls and called upon those who had changed sides not to obstruct their recovery, in due time, of the ancestral freedom that was theirs by right.

Sabinus, then, was glad enough to depart with his soldiers, yet he could not trust the offer, both because of what had already happened and because the very reasonableness of the enemy's terms made him suspect some trap intended to turn him from the course he had settled on; and at the same time, expecting Varus to arrive, he held out under the siege. Meanwhile countless other disturbances took hold of Judea, as many men in many places, driven by hopes of private gain and by hatred of the Jews, rushed into war: two thousand of those who had once served under Herod and had already been disbanded banded together within Judea itself and made war on the royalists, opposed by Achiabus, Herod's cousin, who had been pushed back from the plains into the highlands through his familiarity with

military experience gave the men, while the ruggedness of the terrain let him save whatever could be saved. Judas was the son of Ezekias, the arch-bandit who had once grown very powerful before Herod captured him only after great effort. This Judas now gathered a band of desperate men around Sepphoris in Galilee, made a raid on the royal palace, seized whatever weapons were stored there, armed his followers with them, and carried off

whatever money he found there. He became a terror to everyone, seizing and dragging off those he came across, driven by ambition for greater power and by envy of royal honor, not through any proven excellence, but expecting to win that prize through the sheer scope of his outrages.

There was also Simon, a slave of King Herod, but otherwise a handsome man who stood out for the size and strength of his body, and who had been given great trust. Puffed up by the confusion of the times, he had the audacity to put on a diadem, and when a crowd rallied to him he too was proclaimed king by their madness, thinking himself worthy above anyone else. He set fire to the palace at Jericho and plundered whatever was stored inside it, and he burned many other royal residences throughout the country, destroying them, while he allowed his followers to carry off whatever was left as booty.

He would have done something still greater had swift retaliation not followed: Gratus, commander of the royal soldiers who had joined the Romans, met Simon with the force he had, and after a long and fierce battle most of the Peraeans, being undisciplined and fighting with boldness rather than skill, were destroyed; and as Simon himself was trying to save himself through a ravine, Gratus overtook him and cut off his head. The palace at Ammathus on the Jordan was likewise burned by another band of men like Simon.

So great was the folly that took hold of the nation, because it had no king of its own blood to restrain the masses through virtue, while the foreigners who came in to set the people right became instead the very kindling of sedition, through their own arrogance and greed.

Then there was also Athrongaeus, a man distinguished neither by the fame of his ancestors nor by any abundance of wealth or virtue, but a shepherd, unknown to all in every respect, except that he was conspicuous for the size of his body and the strength of his hands. He had the audacity to set his mind on kingship, thinking that in gaining it he would enjoy it more than the cost of dying for it, counting the loss of his life for such a prize as no great matter. He had four brothers, likewise big men and themselves trusted for their bodily prowess, who were thought to be pillars supporting his hold on the kingdom, and each commanded a company of his own, for a great crowd gathered to them. They acted as generals

and served under him whenever they went into battle at his direction, while he, wearing the diadem, held councils on what was to be done and kept everything referred to his own judgment. This man's power lasted a long time: he was called king and was never deprived of doing whatever he wished, and he and his brothers were devoted to killing on a great scale, waging war on Romans and royal troops alike out of hatred for both, this on account of the arrogance they had suffered under Herod's rule, that on account of what they now thought the Romans were doing wrong to them at present. As time went on they grew ever more savage in the same way, and no one could escape falling into their hands, some through hope of gain, others through sheer habit of killing. They once attacked

a Roman company near Emmaus that was bringing grain and weapons to the army. Surrounding them, they shot down with javelins Arius the centurion, who commanded the whole party, and forty of the best foot soldiers with him. The rest, terrified by their fate, found protection when Gratus arrived with the royal troops around him, and escaped, leaving their dead behind.

Carrying on warfare of this kind for a long time, they caused the Romans no small trouble and did great harm to the nation. In time each of them was overcome, one falling to Gratus, another to Ptolemy; and when the eldest was taken, the last brother, grieved by his fate and seeing that safety was becoming ever harder to find because he was now alone and worn down by great hardship, stripped of his forces, surrendered himself to Archelaus on a pledge of good faith and by the trust of God. But this happened later. Judea was full of bands of robbers, and whoever the king in power happened to find joining any such rising, he pursued to destruction of the common good, causing the Romans little trouble in a few small matters, but bringing about a very great deal of bloodshed among their own people. As soon as Varus

first learned of what Sabinus had done, from a letter Sabinus had written to him, he grew alarmed for the legion and took the two remaining legions, for there were only three in all in Syria, along with four squadrons of cavalry and whatever auxiliary troops the kings and tetrarchs of the time supplied, and hurried to help those then under siege in Judea. Orders were given for all who had been sent ahead to hurry to Ptolemais. The people of Berytus, as he passed through their city, also gave him fifteen hundred auxiliaries, and Aretas of Petra, seeking the friendship of the Romans out of hatred for Herod, sent no small force of infantry and cavalry as well. Once his whole force was gathered at Ptolemais, he handed part of it over to his son and to one of his friends and sent them to make war on the Galileans, who lived

near Ptolemais. This force attacked, routed those who took a stand against it in battle, took Sepphoris, enslaved its inhabitants, and burned the city. Varus himself advanced with the whole army toward Samaria, but spared the city itself because it had taken no part in the disturbances, and camped instead at a village belonging to Ptolemy called Arous. The Arabs, out of hatred for Herod, burned this village, showing hostility even to those who were his friends. From there they advanced and the Arabs plundered and burned another village, Sampho, which was very strongly fortified, and nothing escaped them on their march, everything was filled with fire and slaughter. Emmaus, too, was burned at the order of Varus in retaliation for those who had been killed there, after its inhabitants had fled ahead of him.

From there he advanced and now drew near to Jerusalem, and the Jews who had been besieging the legion camped there could not bear the sight of the approaching army and fled, abandoning the siege half-finished. The Jews within Jerusalem, when Varus sharply charged them, cleared themselves of the accusations, saying that the crowd had gathered only for the festival, and that the war had not been of their own choosing at all but that they had been drawn into it and had been besieged themselves along with the Romans through the boldness of the newcomers, and had shown more eagerness to help the siege against them than to besiege anyone. Josephus, a cousin of King Herod, together with Gratus and Rufus, came out ahead to meet Varus, bringing the soldiers under their command, along with the Romans who had been under siege. Sabinus did not come into Varus's presence at all, but slipped out of the city and made for the coast.

Varus then sent part of his army through the country in search of those responsible for the revolt. When they were identified, he punished the most guilty, but let some go free; those crucified for this cause came to two thousand. After this he sent his own army back home, seeing that it was of no use for anything in the present business, much of it had grown undisciplined and had disregarded Varus's own orders in its pursuit of the gains that came from wrongdoing. He himself, learning that ten thousand Jews had banded together, hurried to capture them. But they did not come to blows at all; instead they surrendered themselves at the advice of Achiab. Varus, granting the crowd a pardon, sent to Caesar those who had been their leaders in the revolt. Caesar

let most of them go free, but punished only those who, though relatives of Herod, had campaigned with the rebels, since they had shown no regard for what was right in taking up arms against their own kin. Having settled these matters and left the legion that had been there before to garrison Jerusalem, Varus hurried back to Antioch. For Archelaus, meanwhile, new troubles were beginning to grow at Rome, for the following reasons. A delegation of Jews arrived at

Rome, since Varus had permitted their nation to send envoys to request self-rule. Those sent as envoys by decision of the nation were fifty in number, and they were supported by more than eight thousand of the Jews then living at Rome. Caesar gathered a council of his own friends and of the leading Romans in the temple of Apollo, which he had built at great expense, and the envoys arrived together with the crowd of Jews resident there, while Archelaus came with his friends. Whichever of the king's relatives there were held back from siding with Archelaus out of hatred for him, yet they thought it a dreadful thing to vote with the envoys against him, believing it would bring shame on themselves in Caesar's eyes to show themselves so eager to act in this way against one of their own family. Philip too was now present,

having come from Syria at Varus's urging, chiefly so as to plead his brother's case, for Varus was very well disposed toward him, and since a change was coming over the kingdom, Varus suspected that it would be divided up, on account of the many who were eager for self-rule, and he did not want to be too late to secure some share of it for Philip himself as well. When the floor was given to the Jewish envoys, who had hoped to speak in favor of abolishing the kingdom altogether, they turned instead to accusing Herod of his lawless acts, declaring that though he had borne the name of king,

he had in fact taken on himself the full measure of ruthlessness found in every tyranny, combining it all for the destruction of the Jews, and that it was simply his nature never to stop devising fresh evils. Indeed, of the many who had perished in utter ruin, no one before could recall the like; and far more wretched than those who had died were those still living, since they suffered not only in what grieved the eye and the mind, but also in their very property. He had adorned the neighboring cities, inhabited by foreigners, at the expense of destroying and laying waste the cities of his own realm, and he had reduced a nation that had received only modest prosperity to the depths of poverty. Whenever he put the nobility to death on groundless charges, he confiscated their estates, and those to whom he granted the wretchedness of mere survival he condemned to be stripped of their property. And apart from the taxes imposed each year on everyone, there were separate exactions paid to him, his household, his friends, and those of his slaves who went out to collect the taxes, because it was impossible to secure anything without paying, however unjustly demanded, in silver.

As for the violation of virgins and the shaming of wives, done in drunken outrage and simple human depravity, they would stay silent, since it gave those who suffered it as much relief to keep it unknown as it would have to have it never happen at all. Such was the outrage Herod visited upon them, of a kind no wild beast would inflict were it granted power over men. Indeed, though the nation had passed through many upheavals and changes, none could recall a disaster of this kind ever having befallen it before, so that Herod himself stood as the very model of the ill-treatment he inflicted on the nation. It would only be natural, then, that Archelaus should gladly be hailed as king in the expectation that whoever succeeded to the throne would prove more moderate than Herod, and that he would join his subjects in mourning his father, so as to win at least a measure of moderation, and would grow close to them in every other way as well.

But since Archelaus feared he would not be believed the true son of Herod, he had, without any delay, straightaway shown the nation his true character, and this before he had even fully secured his rule, since that lay with Caesar to grant and was not yet in his power, by making a slaughter of three thousand of his fellow citizens in the temple itself, as an example of the virtue he would show his future subjects in moderation and good government, an offering made both to his countrymen and to God from the very first act he displayed in office. How could such men not now be entitled to a just hatred against him, in addition to his other cruelty, and to bring the charge of resistance and opposition to his rule as a further complaint? The sum of their request was to be freed from kingship and from rule of that kind altogether, and instead, becoming an addition to the province of Syria, to be placed under the governors sent out there; for in that way it would become clear whether they truly were rebellious and much given to revolution, or not, once they came under more moderate men set to govern them.

When the Jews had spoken to this effect, Nicolaus cleared the kings of the charges, defending Herod on the ground that during his lifetime he had gone unaccused, for surely those who had grounds for complaint against a living man, who was able to punish them for moderate offenses, ought not to bring their accusation together only against a dead man. As for what had been done by Archelaus, he laid the blame on the outrage of the Jews themselves, who, in reaching for things contrary to the laws and beginning the slaughter, brought the charge against those who had merely defended themselves against their violence once they acted. He accused them further of a love of revolution and sedition, born of an undisciplined refusal to submit to justice and the laws, out of a desire to have everything their own way in all things. This, then, was what Nicolaus said.

Caesar, having heard them, dissolved the council, but a few days later he did not declare Archelaus king; instead he made him ethnarch of half the territory that had paid tribute to Herod, promising to honor him with the rank of king if he conducted himself in a manner worthy of it. The other half he divided in two and gave over to two of Herod's other sons, Philip and Antipas, the same Antipas who had disputed with his brother Archelaus over the whole realm. To Antipas were made subject Peraea and Galilee, with a tribute of two hundred talents a year. Batanea, together with Trachonitis and Auranitis, along with part of the house of Zenodorus, as it was called, paid Philip a hundred talents. What was subject to Archelaus

included Idumea, Judea, and the Samaritan territory, though the last had a quarter of its tribute remitted, Caesar having voted them this relief because they had not joined the rest of the people in revolt. The cities subject to Archelaus were Strato's Tower and Sebaste along with Joppa and Jerusalem; for Gaza, Gadara, and Hippos, being Greek cities, Caesar detached from his jurisdiction

He added this to the province of Syria. The revenue in money that came to Archelaus each year from the territory he had received amounted to six hundred talents. Such were the shares that fell to the sons of Herod from their father's estate. As for Salome, besides what her brother assigned her in his will—Jamnia, Azotus, and Phasaelis, and five hundred thousand drachmas of coined silver—Caesar granted her also the royal residence at Ascalon. This too brought in a revenue of sixty talents a year, and its estate lay within the territory of Archelaus. The rest of the king's relatives received whatever the will had specified for them. To Herod's two unmarried daughters, apart from what their father had left them, Caesar gave a dowry of two hundred and fifty thousand drachmas of coined silver each, and married them to the sons of Pheroras. He also granted to the king's children whatever Herod had left to him personally, some fifteen hundred talents, keeping back only a few pieces of furniture, valued not for their worth but because they reminded him of the king who had given them.

While these matters were being settled by Caesar, a young man, Jewish by birth but raised in the city of Sidon in the household of a Roman freedman, made his way into Herod's family circle by trading on a resemblance of build to Alexander, Herod's murdered son, which struck all who saw him. This encouraged him to make a bid for the throne. Taking as his accomplice a countryman of his who was experienced in the affairs of the court, naturally villainous and capable of stirring up great trouble, and who now became his tutor in this kind of wickedness, he gave himself out to be Alexander, Herod's son, smuggled away by the men sent to kill him—for, he said, they had killed others in his place to deceive onlookers, and had spared both him and his brother Aristobulus. Buoyed up by this story, he did not stop deceiving those he met, but crossing to Crete he won over to belief in him every Jew he came in contact with there, and having got money from their generosity he sailed on to Melos. There he received far more money still, on the strength of his royal kinship and in the hope of recovering his ancestral throne and rewarding his benefactors. He hurried on to Rome escorted by his private hosts, and putting in at Puteoli he had no less success in winning over the Jews there by the same deception. They came flocking to him as to a king, both the rest and all who had had ties of hospitality and friendship with Herod. The reason lay in people's readiness to believe gladly what they were told, reinforced by the convincing likeness of his features; for even those who had been closely acquainted with Alexander were largely persuaded that he was no other than Alexander himself, and they swore to their neighbors that it was so, so that when word of him spread through Rome, the whole Jewish community there went out to meet him, hailing this unhoped-for deliverance as an act of God and rejoicing on account of his descent through his mother, whenever he passed down the street carried in a litter. Everything about him had a royal air, kept up at the expense of his private hosts; great crowds gathered around him with cries of acclamation such as naturally attend men so unexpectedly restored—there was nothing that was not done for him.

When the report about him reached Caesar, he was inclined to disbelieve it, since he did not think Herod could easily have been deceived in matters that concerned him so greatly; still, giving some room to hope, he sent Celadus, one of his own freedmen who had been acquainted with the young princes, with orders to bring Alexander before him. Celadus brought the man, who proved no better able to withstand the judgment of a discerning eye than he had been to withstand that of the crowd. Caesar indeed was not deceived; the man did resemble Alexander, but not so closely as to fool those capable of sober judgment. His hands were worn from manual labor, and instead of the softness that came from Alexander's pampered, well-born constitution, his body, shaped by the opposite way of life, had turned out coarser. Observing this collusion between teacher and pupil in their lying story, and the boldness with which they had put it together, Caesar questioned him about Aristobulus—what had become of him, since he had supposedly been smuggled away with him, and why he had not come forward too, to claim the rank that men of such birth were entitled to. The man replied that Aristobulus had been left behind on Cyprus for fear of the dangers of the sea, so that if some disaster befell the one of them, the line of Mariamme might not be wiped out entirely but Aristobulus might survive to deal with those who had plotted against them. While he was still insisting on this, with the deviser of the whole scheme backing him up, Caesar took the young man aside privately and said, "A reward awaits you if you will not try to deceive me as well, on condition that your life is spared: tell me truly who you really are, and who put you up to daring such a scheme; for the plot you have undertaken shows more cunning than your years would suggest." And so, since there was no other course open to him, he told Caesar the whole plot, how it had been arranged and by whom. Caesar did not punish the false Alexander—for he had not lied once he confessed the truth to him—but, seeing that he was strong enough to work with his hands, assigned him to row among the oarsmen; the man who had put him up to it he had put to death. As for the people of Melos, their loss of everything they had spent on the false Alexander was penalty enough. Such was the inglorious end of this bold conspiracy concerning the false Alexander.

Archelaus, once he had taken over the ethnarchy and arrived in Judea, removed Joazar son of Boethus from the high priesthood, holding against him his support of the rebels, and put in his place Joazar's brother Eleazar. He also rebuilt the palace at Jericho magnificently, and diverted half the water that irrigated the village of Neara to supply the plain he had planted with palm trees, and founded a village there which he named Archelais after himself. In violation of ancestral custom he married Glaphyra, daughter of King Archelaus and formerly the wife of his own brother Alexander, by whom she had had children—though it was forbidden among the Jews for a man to marry his brother's widow. Nor did Eleazar remain long in the priesthood, for while he was still alive he was replaced by Jesus son of Sie.

In the tenth year of Archelaus's rule, the leading men among the Jews and Samaritans, no longer able to bear his cruelty and tyranny, brought accusations against him before Caesar, especially since they had learned that he had disregarded the instructions given him, to treat his subjects with moderation. When Caesar heard this, he angrily summoned Archelaus's agent in Rome—his name too was Archelaus—and considered it beneath him to write to Archelaus himself, but told the agent, "Sail at once, without any delay, and bring him back to us." The man made a swift crossing, and on reaching Judea found Archelaus feasting with his friends; he informed him of Caesar's decision and urged him to set out at once. Caesar, when Archelaus arrived, gave a hearing to his accusers and then to his own defense, and sent him into exile, assigning him Vienne, a city in Gaul, as his place of residence, while confiscating his property.

Before he was summoned to Rome, Archelaus had described to his friends a dream he had had. He seemed to see ten ears of wheat, full-grown and heavy with grain, being devoured by oxen. On waking, since the vision seemed to portend something momentous, he sent for the interpreters of dreams who made such matters their study. While they gave conflicting explanations, one to another, for no single account satisfied them all, a man of the Essene sect named Simon, after asking leave to speak freely, said that the vision foretold a change of fortune for Archelaus, and not for the better: oxen, he explained, signified hardship, since the animal labors at its work, and further signified change, because ground plowed by their toil cannot remain in the same state; while the ten ears of grain marked out a like number of years, since one ear comes to harvest in the course of a single year, and Archelaus's time in power was drawing to its end. So he interpreted the dream. On the fifth day after this vision first came to him, the man Archelaus who had been summoned—the other one—arrived in Judea to bring him back.

Something similar befell his wife Glaphyra as well, daughter of King Archelaus, to whom, as I said earlier, Alexander son of Herod and brother of Archelaus had been married when she was a virgin. When it happened that Alexander was put to death by his father, she was married to Juba, king of the Libyans, and after the Libyan's death, while she was living as a widow in Cappadocia with her father, Archelaus took her as his wife, divorcing his own wife Mariamme to do so—so great was his passion for Glaphyra. While living with Archelaus, she had the following dream: she seemed to see Alexander appear before her, and rejoiced at the sight and embraced him eagerly, but he reproached her, saying, "Glaphyra, you prove true the saying that women cannot be trusted—you who pledged yourself to me and shared my home as a virgin, and yet, though we had children together, have consigned my love to oblivion out of desire for a second marriage. And not content with that outrage, you have dared to take a third husband into your bed as well, coming shamelessly and improperly into my house, and contracting a marriage with Archelaus, a man who is your own brother-in-law and my brother. But I will not forget my affection for you; instead I will free you from every reproach, restoring you to what you were as I had made you." Having told this to the women who were her companions, she died within a few days.

I have thought it worth recounting these matters, not regarding them as foreign to the present history, both because it concerns the royal family and, further, because it affords an example bearing on the immortality of souls and on how divine providence embraces human affairs. Whoever finds such things hard to believe is free to keep his own opinion, without hindering another who is led by them toward virtue.

When the territory of Archelaus had been added as a dependency to that of Syria, Caesar sent Quirinius, a man of consular rank, to assess property values in Syria and to sell off the estate of Archelaus.

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