On the Destruction of Jerusalem 1.31–1.36

Antigonus meanwhile put off the flight he had prepared. As he delayed, Herod surrounded him with his army and besieged him, pressing on that part which was in front of the temple, where Pompey too had broken through the wall. The king had now such confidence of victory that even after the siege had begun he turned aside to take as his wife the daughter of Alexander, exchanging the war trumpet for wedding songs and mingling marriage with war; and having seized the chance of the union on the occasion of battle, he returned from the festivities to the war. Sosius also arrived, sent by Antony to help the king. So, with forces joined—the Romans excelling in experience of war and military discipline, and striving eagerly to please the king—a breach was made in hardly the fifth month, Herod's men having dared to scale the wall. As the Roman centurions burst into the town, countless killings took place, and everything around the temple was laid waste. Some, fleeing to the temple, others, gathered in their houses, were slaughtered; there was no pity for old age, none for infancy or the weakness of women. Antigonus gave himself up and, forgetting his position, threw himself at Sosius's feet. But Sosius, whom so great a reversal of fortune should have moved to pity, mocked him as he lay there and called him Antigone; yet he did not spare him as though he were a woman, but had him bound and thrust into prison. Herod was in turmoil about how to rescue his country from the hands of the Romans and how to keep the temple undefiled by gentiles. For the Romans were hurrying to see the inner mysteries and to profane the holy of holies. But the king, now by entreaty, now by threats, kept them back one by one, thinking victory worse than flight if any of the sacred things were made public. The Romans pressed for plunder, Herod resisted, lest they leave him an empty city, and himself a king left over in a deserted kingdom. Sosius on the other hand insisted that the plunder of a captured city was owed to the soldiers. But the king promised to give money to the soldiers from his own resources, and so redeemed with money what remained of his country. To fulfill his promise, he treated the soldiers most generously, the commanders appropriately, and rewarded Sosius himself with royal liberality; no one went away ungrateful. Sosius offered a crown to God, and, departing, took Antigonus with him to Antony, who struck him with the axe as a man of degenerate spirit.

Herod lavished a great deal on his own people as well, and gave very many gifts to Antony and his friends; yet it was not possible to buy security for himself from Antony. For Antony was already enslaved by his love of Cleopatra and served her, and, given over to her, waited on her lust; but he could not satisfy the woman's greed, a woman especially practiced in murdering her relatives, after whose destruction she had added their possessions to her own like spoils. With the same greed and cruelty, if she heard by report of any wealthier men in Syria, she killed them; and with Antony already given over to her lusts, she thought that the kingdom of Judea and that of Arabia too could be added to her greed, once those ruling both nations were destroyed. But although drunk with lust and heavy with sleep, Antony came to his senses in this respect, that he refused to destroy such men and most powerful kings at the command of a most wanton woman. Yet, so as not to let them go unscathed, he struck at their friends: he took away the greatest part of their possessions, especially the land that produces balsam, and he awarded to Cleopatra's greed all the cities lying within the river Eleutherus, except Tyre and Sidon. Soothed by her husband with such a reward, she accompanied Antony as far as the Euphrates when he set out against the Parthians and returned through Judea, where Herod did not fail to win the queen's goodwill with gifts and very great presents. Her successes increased her pride, so that the woman's lack of self-control lifted her beyond all measure. For not long afterwards Artabazes, king of the Parthians, son of the most powerful king Tigranes, was given to her as a gift. Antony, holding him captive, and though he was owed to a triumph with all the Persian booty and spoils, handed him over to the woman like a cheap slave, so that the more glorious the victory had been, the more shameful the gift, which dishonored a king with such mockery. Yet he did not long enjoy his successes, since he did not know how to use them; through the woman's insolence he roused Augustus against himself. So the war of Actium was being prepared with great movements on both sides. The king was most eager to undergo the war with Antony, because Judea was free from hostile disturbance and he had recovered Hyrcania, long held by Antigonus's sister. But in this too Herod was most fortunate, since he was kept from mixing himself in others' dangers. For Cleopatra, wishing to estrange his mind from the kings and turn him away, persuaded her husband that Herod should make war on the Arabs: if he won, Arabia would fall to the queen; if he lost, Cleopatra's rule would be extended over Judea. Whichever won, he would destroy the other. This plan turned out in Herod's favor not by its design but in the event. As soon as he began the battle, he turned the enemy back, being stronger in cavalry; but in the end he was overcome by the multitude of the enemy and surrounded by numbers. When his opponents' forces were gathered at Canatha, he wished to close up his line against them; but his men, elated by their earlier success and therefore rushing on the enemy, left him in the lurch, especially through the fraud of Athenion, whom Cleopatra had attached as a commander, not to help Herod but to desert him in the very moment of need. In the end the Arabs attacked his abandoned army in rocky and pathless places, laid it low and routed it with heavy slaughter, and, following the fugitives to their refuges, destroyed them. Herod arrived, later indeed than necessity demanded; yet he avenged the misfortune and in later battles so afflicted the Arabs that they often lamented their single victory. There occurred also a heavy failure of spirits because of an earthquake, by which a great number of cattle and about thirty thousand people perished. The whole military force, however, since it lived under the open sky, remained unharmed. From this the enemy's spirits were raised, so that they thought they could more easily invade a deserted Judea and crush men struck by such portents. Therefore Herod thought he should rouse his men to defend themselves, especially because he had learned that the envoys he had sent to Arabia had been treacherously killed. So he addressed them in their alarm with this speech: “After so many successful battles of ours, the enemy's power has been broken, by their own confession—they who, driven by mad grief, have killed our envoys as if they were the defeated. It seems strange to me that an irrational fear has struck you so much that you prefer the chance events of the elements to the successes of your courage that you already know. There has been no encounter in which the Arabs did not at once give way, and, turned to flight, think they must yield; and, as is the way with the stealth of war, they have sought remedies in fraud and ambushes, not to win themselves but to delay our victory. When we ought to be confident because of this, alarm has followed as if at a fearful war, because the earth shook, although those who were waging battle alone were unharmed. Or if we wish to consider whom it harmed, we shall judge rather the Arabs, whom it brought back into war so that they would not withdraw by flight from the stronger. For I see that they have returned to the battle line relying not on arms or strength but on the loss of our cattle. Fragile is the hope that depends not on confidence in one's own courage but on another's misery, since on earth nothing is so changeable as prosperity or adversity. For in brief moments the state of human affairs is renewed; neither is prosperity lasting nor misfortune stubborn. So neither misery nor its opposite is permanent, but the turns of affairs often alternate and vary in the same people. We may take an example from ourselves. In the earlier clash we were stronger, but as the battle went on our lot changed, so that we were beaten by those whom we had beaten. So we too may hope that those who had beaten us will be beaten by us. For excessive presumption is always unwary and careless of itself, while fear warns one to look to the future and teaches diligence. In prosperity boldness creeps in, and ill-advised rashness does not know how to wait for the counsel of its leader. In the end, when you went forward against my judgment, Athenion's wickedness found room to do harm. Now your alarm pledges me a victory in advance. Lift up your spirits, then, and raise again the ancient greatness of soul of the Jews. Let not the commotions of senseless things terrify you, and do not think the earthquake a sign of another misfortune. The sufferings of the elements carry their own harm; fear nothing beyond what lies in those very blows. For the earthquake and the plague of living creatures are not signs of dangers but the dangers themselves. There is nothing for us to fear, as though we were about to suffer heavy things, we who have endured the heaviest. He who has punished can now be gracious, and milder than if he had not punished. What is kept in store after an earthquake and pestilence but mercy? For we have paid for our sins twice over. And yet what is useful for war we have intact; for the pestilence carried off those who were outside the war, while our victory took from the enemy what they had chosen as fit for war. Then, for us it was cattle that died; for them, good counsel—they who thought the envoys we sent should be slaughtered against all right and law. They have violated the law of all men, even of the barbarians themselves; for even among those who do not know humanity envoys are held inviolable, while heavenly vengeance is dreaded and God is feared as the avenger of so great a crime. Our adversaries have committed what neither human nor divine laws leave unpunished. Let us go out, then, to fight not for borders or spoils but for an injury done to God. Let not love of wife or offspring rouse us to war, but the protection of God that we count on. We are carrying out not our own decisions but the sacred precepts of divine right, so that we may demand vengeance for those whom religion commands to be inviolable. Amid enemy arms an embassy alone is the trustee of peace; he who performs an embassy puts off the enemy. Their blood now cries to God and demands vengeance. Let us hasten then to battle, while we have God as the avenger of the slain. They fight better for us, and, surrounded by legions of angels, they stand before us in the battle line.” Having urged his soldiers with such words, he rushed against the enemy, seeking every opportunity for battle. The Arabs were superior in number but weaker in spirit; so when battle was joined, about five thousand of them fell. The rest, retreating into a fortification, were worn down by lack of water, so that they sent an embassy and asked for peace for a price. But when they saw themselves being put off, and their thirst was inflamed further as the water failed, many came out and offered themselves to the enemy, preferring to die by a sword they chose rather than by thirst. Herod kept them in chains, lest there be any trick. So in five days about four thousand were taken; when others came out to fight, again about seven thousand men were cut down. Humbled by this blow, the Arabs, as much superior in counsel as they were inferior in courage, sought the king himself, whom they had as an adversary, as their defender and helper.

But a greater anxiety struck the victor, so that he who had subjected others dreaded a danger threatening not his borders now but his whole kingdom, since Antony, to whom he was bound in faithful friendship, had been defeated. For Augustus Caesar, victor in the contest at Actium, did not consider Antony fully overcome while Herod survived the victory. So the anxious king, having learned by a true report that Caesar had come to Rhodes, sailed to him, so that rumor would not outrun his journey by land. On arriving he laid aside his diadem and presented himself in private dress but with a kingly mind. Then, holding nothing back from the truth, he kept his firmness and preserved his dignity. “I confess, Augustus,” he said, “that I was a faithful ally to Antony, as one who received the kingdom from him, to whom I do not deny that I am still a devoted debtor. And I would have proved it by arms, had Cleopatra not begrudged it and the Arabs not hindered it. By that necessity I did not bear arms against you—not as a deserter of my friend or one afraid of battle, but as one occupied with affairs at home. Yet Antony did not find me ungrateful, since, though absent, I sent him reinforcements for his army and countless supplies of grain. And you too, Caesar, would have judged me not ungrateful for his kindnesses had I been present at the war of Actium. See how I hold nothing back. I fear more to seem ungrateful toward your enemy in your eyes than to seem an enemy toward you. Your judgment is heavier to me than war, for before you it is not merits of virtue but faults that are on trial. So I prefer to plead before you a case about loyalty rather than about treachery. See, Caesar, that I did not desert Antony when he was whole, nor flee him when he was defeated. You defeated Antony, Caesar, with your mighty legions, you defeated him by your counsels, you defeated him by the strength of the Roman empire, which he abandoned and which he denied; and truly he was defeated by your virtues, but more by his own vices. Cleopatra his wife defeated him, Egyptian love defeated him, the luxury of the canopy defeated him. He was defeated because he preferred to be defeated with Cleopatra rather than to win without her; a woman more hostile to her own than to her adversaries defeated him. I had urged the woman's death, if he wished to look to himself; I had promised help by which to restore him in his distress; I had promised forces by which to protect him in flight; I had offered myself as his partner in war. But Cleopatra's desires had bound his mind. He was defeated because he would not listen to me. I too was defeated with Antony, but with less disgrace, because Cleopatra defeated him, and Antony me. He did not abandon a barbarian woman, I did not abandon a friend. With him I laid down the diadem; but fearing to come to you because of my loyalty to a friend, I set aside the insignia of kingship, but not the consciousness of virtue. Judge as you will. Yet whatever the outcome of your judgment, I shall take with me this: that it will be judged what kind of friend I have been.”

To this Caesar replied: “Greetings,” he said, “and now enjoy your kingdom all the more, because we do not envy your virtues but delight in them. For you are worthy to rule more peoples, you who guard friendship in such a way that you do not deny a friend placed in adversity and are not ashamed to confess him your friend. But try to attach yourself to the more fortunate and to keep faith in prosperity; in adversity you have proved it enough. Antony may have conquered you, but I did not think you conquered, whom friendship made equal to the victors. That is why we seek you, because no outcome of war has changed you; for it was not you who deserted Antony, but Antony you, who trusted Cleopatra more than you. His folly has won you for us, because he chose for himself the most destructive woman and rejected the faithful man. No wonder if Antony, defeated, clings to Cleopatra, by whom he was captured while a victor. Why wonder if Cleopatra made you leave Antony, when she separated him from me and made him an enemy instead of a partner in empire? Therefore, since you were rejected along with us, reign also with us. Nor is this without benefit: while we were occupied with civil wars, you subdued the untamed nation of the Arabs; for we count the enemies of the Jews as ours. Those who attack you bring arms against us. So you fought for us while you were winning for yourself; and therefore we shall reward you, so that your kingdom may be confirmed by our gift. Meanwhile it is no small favor to have taken nothing away; for the rest we shall try to see that you do not miss Antony. For it is not fitting that one whom we have conquered in war we should not conquer by kindness.” When Caesar had said this, he put the diadem on Herod's head, adding warm attention to the gift. Invited by this esteem of Caesar's, Herod, wishing to draw away from Caesar's anger Alexas, one of Antony's friends, a man with whom Caesar was especially indignant, pleaded with many prayers; but excessive indignation left no room for pardon. When they set out from there for Egypt, Herod escorted Caesar on his march, supplying everything of use to him or his army, and won for himself the warmest regard of the commander, especially because in the drier places as far as Pelusium an abundance of water was provided by royal foresight. By these services he poured such love of himself into all that he seemed to have deserved more than he received, and the power of his kingdom was thought less than the generosity of his kindness. So Caesar, when affairs in Egypt had gone as he wished and Antony and Cleopatra were dead, not only gave back to Herod what had been taken from him, but besides what Cleopatra had diverted, he also granted him Gadara, Joppa, and Samaria. He also gave him the coastal cities of Gaza, Anthedon, Joppa, and Strato's Tower, and he granted the king for his bodyguard four hundred Gauls, by whom Cleopatra had been surrounded as she went about, and many other things. But he valued above all these the fact that he was loved by Caesar above all others, after Agrippa however, and by Agrippa after Caesar.

So in the fifteenth year of his reign, raised up by so great a run of success, he turned to piety, that he might respond to his good fortune and to grace; and to show himself grateful for the heavenly benefits flowing on him beyond measure, he adorned the temple. He enclosed the whole circuit of ground around the temple with a wall and took in a doubled space, at immense cost of building and with exquisite beauty. Proof of this were the great porticoes around the sanctuary, which he built from the foundations; nor was his concern for defense less than for adornment. For he fortified the fortress lying on the north, which he named for Antony's sake, in no way inferior to the upper palaces. He also added in the very citadel of the royal house twin residences of very great extent and wonderful beauty, to whose charm you would think nothing could be compared. One of them was called the Caesareum, the other the Agrippeum, so that the lasting memory of such great friends would be celebrated in his own buildings. The king not only built the city of Sebaste but also filled it with inhabitants. And not to go through the details, he hardly passed over any site of ancient cities without renewing it if it was falling, or adorning it with buildings that seemed lacking. He spread his liberality even to the five-yearly games, and so enriched that kind of men with poured-out wealth. He also founded a temple of white marble to Caesar at the sources of the Jordan, having become so forgetful of religion that he consecrated a temple to a man and brought the practice of the gentiles into Judea. The place is called Panium. There a mountain of great height stretches its summit aloft; in its side a shady cave opens, through which the depth of a foul-smelling chasm breathes out a savage stench. Inside is a gathering of waters, and a great mass of it lies without any motion, so that the measure of its depth cannot be grasped. Outside, around the roots of the cave itself, springs gush out; hence many have thought that the Jordan rises there. What the truth is, however, we think must be disclosed later. There was on the coast a city called Strato's Tower, already worn out by frequent wars and sinking into ruin from sheer age, yet outstanding in the advantage and charm of its site. He renewed it with white stone and adorned it with various buildings, and in it he expressed the power of his greatness of spirit and the elegance of his work. For it lies in the middle between two coastal cities, Dora and Joppa; on both sides it is skirted by a harborless shore, so that all who wish to sail past from Egypt to Phoenicia are tossed at sea, because the sea there is often stirred by winds, and especially by the African wind, by whose even moderate breath the waves are raised; then, dashed against the rocks that run out in front and thrown back with its force broken, the wild sea is made rougher by its falling. So the king, setting no limit to expense, conquered nature by greatness of spirit, and made a harbor larger than the Piraeus; and in it, cutting through the mass of the rocks, he made safe anchorages. Having measured the space suited to the size of the harbor, he threw huge stones into the sea, very many of them fifty feet long and others even greater. He marked the harbor itself with very great towers, one of which he called Drusion, to weave into the honors of his work the name of Drusus, who was of Caesar's family. He also placed shorter flights of steps at frequent points, by which ships could be drawn up without heavy labor. With three huge colossal statues he beautified the whole charm of that harbor. Again, he founded a temple of Caesar on higher ground, and in the middle of the temple he set up a colossus in the name of Augustus, as his image, no smaller than the statue of Olympian Jupiter or of Argive Juno. You would not know whether to admire more the beauty amid such difficulties or the strength of the work, and you might think that its solidity surpasses even such great beauty, since the work remains indissoluble against both sea and age. So manifold grace accrued from that work: a very great city was added to the province, a harbor to sailors, and honor to Caesar, from whose name it is called Caesarea at this time.

This power of the king, overflowing with successes, was brought low by seeking partnership with one woman, and broken by sorrowful griefs, since, against right and law, he thought a marriage should be measured by nobility of family rather than by love, after a certain royal custom. He had as his partner a woman of Jerusalem named Doris, joined to him earlier when he was a private man, who ought to have been the dearer to him because she had been fortunate for her husband: with her he had attained the height of royalty. But, forgetful of her goodness, he cast off Doris and married Mariamne, granddaughter of Aristobulus and daughter of Alexander. So while he pursued nobility, he fell into a turmoil in which his own house could not agree with him, though many peoples of different provinces obeyed him. And lest the eyes of the new bride be offended by the son Doris had borne, with a stepmother's hatred set up in the house, Antipater (for that was the young man's name) was driven not only from his father's house but from the whole city, and made room for the ill-omened marriage, which the father celebrated by the exile of his only son; he was hardly sent for even at the solemnities of the feast days. The woman, seeing her husband complying with her, turned even the reproach of his devotion into pride; and there was added a cause by which her mind was rightly inflamed: for she knew that her grandfather Hyrcanus had been killed by her husband's plotting, falsely suspected of desire for the kingdom. He is the one we mentioned above, whom Barzapharnes, ruler of the Persians, had carried off captive when he occupied Syria; he was first kept in Parthia, then, out of pity for his fallen lot, allowed to live among his countrymen, the Jews who lived beyond the Euphrates. Would that, as he had been granted to those who pleaded for him, he had also believed those who warned him not to stir up, through the restlessness of human nature, kinship with a powerful man by going over to Herod: that this would be dangerous to him, because desire to keep a kingdom harasses no one more than one's closest kin, and he should beware of his relatives. But he, weary of foreign life and longing for his own, crossed the Euphrates and returned to Judea. This sank deeper into Herod's breast than anyone had supposed—not that Hyrcanus aimed at the kingdom, but because it was thought uncertain whether a man of royal birth, long practiced in the privilege of power, could keep away from it. So the noose of death for Hyrcanus was the marriage of his granddaughter, for whose sake he had hurried to Herod, not knowing whether it was safer to live as a captive among enemies or as a kinsman with a king. So, with not even a slight suspicion of aiming at the kingdom, he was killed for this alone, that the kingdom seemed to belong to him. Meanwhile Herod loved Mariamne with lavish love and did not want her offended; and the woman had heaped up favor by numerous offspring. For she had borne him five children; but of the three males the youngest had died at Rome while being educated in liberal letters. The other two were honored with royal style beyond the measure of private persons. The young men were favored by their mother's nobility and by their own birth within the kingdom, since they had been born when their father was already reigning; but most of all by the love of Mariamne, by which the king was inflamed more and more every day, so that, although no return of love was paid him by his wife, he still took care not to sadden the woman's mind in anything. With equal balance the woman's hatred and the husband's love contended against each other. Yet Mariamne more justly hated the husband who loved her than Herod loved Mariamne who did not love him. The woman had hatred from his crime and confidence from his love: by the one she opposed him in grief for her grandfather, by the other she was lifted up through her lover's compliance. And so she did not refrain even from reproachful charges, that he had wickedly taken from her her grandfather Hyrcanus and her brother Jonathan, though one was his grandfather-in-law and the other his brother-in-law: the one ought to have been spared because of the weakness of old age, the other at least because of his youth. It was an outrageous deed: to the youth of seventeen to whom he had entrusted the high priesthood, he at once gave the honor and brought death—for no other reason, as we have learned, than that when, clothed in the priestly vestment, he first approached the altar on a sacred and festal day, the people suddenly burst into tears. This was so suspect to Herod that he believed the people had wept for joy and so had betrayed their affection toward the young man—those tears were signs of a wish, a dangerous devotion of his people, who had shown from their inmost hearts what zeal they had for the young man's service; and that noble royal grandson, son of an unruly woman and brother of a queen more insolent still, who scorned her royal husband, would break out into ruling unless he were removed from the scene in good time, since he had such beauty and such grace of comeliness that he would rightly be judged preferable to all. So he resolved to kill the young man. The young man's mother troubled him, keener to investigate and fiercer to avenge, who would let nothing remain hidden and nothing unpunished; and for that reason he considered recalling and restraining himself. But again he was troubled by the love of all for the young man, growing greater daily, and by the danger to the kingdom. So, roused by headlong fury, he decided to look to himself by any means.