On the Destruction of Jerusalem 1.44–1.46

Letters were also found that had been composed against the brothers Archelaus and Philip. These were sons of the king who were being educated at Rome, whom Antipater attacked above all because he saw that they were endowed with no small wisdom and that the king was resting a father's affection on them. In fact he had summoned them by letter to return home sooner. So Antipater thought they stood in the way of his interests, and he applied his arts so that, by a pretended concern for the young men, all the efforts of his faction would be overshadowed. He composed letters in the names of powerful men placed at Rome whom he had drawn into his friendship; from others too he extorted by bribery that they write that the young men were pressing their father with hostile hatred and lamenting with excessive complaint the death of Alexander and Aristobulus. And he pressed such letters on his father by secret arts through the courtiers who served his crime, with the same cunning with which he had earlier feigned to be his brothers' intercessor, so that under the pretext of a devoted patronage he wove in the parricide of impiety. When all these things had been brought into the open by the examinations, and it was most clearly laid bare that the father's life had been sought by the poison and the death of the brothers by the letters, the council decided that punishment should be taken of the author, who had betrayed by later slander that he had persecuted his brothers not as parricides but as rivals for the lawful succession—not to defend his father, but so as not to have a partner in the kingdom. Meanwhile, though seven months passed between the proofs of his crimes and Antipater's return, no evidence of what had been done became known to Antipater, so great was the hatred of all around him. Uncertain of everything, therefore, he wrote from the city of Rome that he would soon arrive, and that he had been dismissed by Caesar with the highest honor. Concealing what he knew, Herod wrote back that he should hurry, secure in his father's affection; not only had nothing been lessened by his absence, but so much favor was added that out of regard for him his mother's offense was lessened. For Herod had again caught her at home consenting to her son's arts, had stripped her of her share and banished her from the advantages of royal liberality; to her he made a show in his letters of remitting his indignation, fearing that if Antipater learned of his mother's expulsion, he would rouse his suspicions to be on guard. So on his way he first learned at Tarentum of Pheroras's death, and there made great mourning, which some attributed to an affection of devotion, as though he grieved impatiently at his uncle's death. But he was groaning that the agent of his parricidal attempt had been taken from him; and not only had the preparation of the crime not gone forward, but he was terrified that he had given the poison, lest in some way it come to the king's knowledge and he publish the drama of the crime. So he crossed to the port of Caesarea, by no means free of heavier care and anxiety, since his mother also gave no small presumption of the condemnation of her offspring. But his friends urged him on—men who thought everything should be put off that served Antipater's desire to return home—and, relying on his ingenuity, by which he was used to easily bending even a father turned against him back to favor by his counsels, they urged him to present himself quickly to his father and to the kingdom destined for him, since no one would dare to speak against him while he was present; the opportunity of his absence alone had kindled the hope that the king's mind could be turned from him. And so he must forestall it in good time, lest by delaying he either offend a father who longed for him or exasperate one who suspected him, by betraying his distrust. So he believed those who urged what was agreeable rather than what was necessary. But when he entered the port and saw no one coming to meet him, and felt his presence avoided like a plague—the greatest solitude amid the greatest crowd of the place, since no one dared to meet him, some fearing, others hostile, for at that time hatreds too had received the authority not to hide—he began to reckon with his crimes and to be harried by the goads of conscience: no place of flight or help of escape was left him; he was surrounded and held captive as if in nets. He took all his confidence from impudence, so that, concealing everything, he presented himself unexpectedly to his father, rushed into his embrace, and put forward the offices of devotion. But Herod, pushing him away as he pressed in with outstretched hands, and turning his head aside so as not to be touched by the kiss of a parricide, cried out: “This too belongs to the madness of a parricide, that you seek the embrace of one to whom you know you are hateful—to fill your father with horror of you, and by the touch of a guilty body to wring out the sweetness of living. Do not touch, do not defile, the man you have attacked by crime. Clear yourself first if you can; wash away what has been detected. I will not avoid a trial, nor let a hearing be denied you, nor take the inquiry upon myself, nor leave you an opportunity for argument. Varus is here at the right time; prepare your defense before him. There is no room for delay; tomorrow, however well furnished with tricks and frauds you are, you will have the opportunity to clear yourself.” He, stunned by fear of such agitation, dared not and could not reply; but going outside he wavered in mind, because he had learned nothing at all of what had been done and disclosed to his father. But afterwards his mother and wife came to him and revealed everything. When he learned it, he began to collect himself and to prepare in mind how to meet the accusation and weaken the confession. On the next day all the king's relatives and Antipater's friends assembled; all were present at the examination. Those who had reported various things about Antipater were ordered to be brought in. Letters of Antipater's mother were also read, in which she had written to her son to let him know that the drama of their crimes had been betrayed to his father; he should by no means come unless some force were summoned from Caesar to surround him with its protection; he should not commit himself to a trial, attacked as he was by the confessions of so many, but fortify himself with arms. When this had been added to the rest, Antipater came in and, throwing himself at his father's feet, begged him not to hold him condemned in advance: he was confident, if a hearing were granted, that he would be free of the charge, if his father wished. His father ordered him to be silent and forestalled him with this speech: “That the wickedness of Antipater cannot seem pardonable to any just man is certain enough; but I think I am the more burdened in your eyes, Varus. For I fear you may hate me too, who begot parricidal sons whom even a father could not spare—though in this I am the more to be pitied, that I loved even such sons. But of those I say nothing, whom I myself exasperated, and whose just pleas against this man I rejected. For they had no cause of grief against me except that Antipater was preferred to them and had received the privilege of royal partnership, though he was not born of royal stock. Yet I thought that the elder was being taken on as guardian for the younger. But I brought in an enemy to envy the nobler ones, rouse the boys, trap the weak, betray the unwary. I do not deny that they fell; but they ought rather to have been excused than pressed. This Antipater took them from me; this man made them plotters against me. I grieved, I confess, that those to whom I had given the hope of the kingdom, for whom I had reserved the succession, should contrive wickedness against me; but they hated not their father but Antipater. So they perished, to their father's grief and Antipater's profit. Do you ask, Varus, who killed them? Learn whom their death profited. The house was empty for the stepmother's son; the palace, which had many successors, lay open for one to succeed. Nor was his bloody mind and impious spirit filled by the death of his brothers. When he had no more brothers to hate, he persecuted his father. I reflect that I prepared for this man the security of his inheritance; I seemed to him, impatient for my departure, to be living too long myself. I taught him what he wanted, when I took away his rivals for the succession: he could not bear my delay, nor did he wait for the kingdom except to gain it by parricide. He repaid me in kind for having picked him up when cast off and preferred him to the nobler. To which of them did I give as much as to him? To him I yielded power while still alive; by an open will I named him heir, which is usually dangerous for kings—that someone should know he will succeed. I granted him fifty talents in revenues; I gave him three hundred when he set out for Rome; I commended him to Caesar as if my only son. I kept nothing for myself for which I should fear a parricide; but this armed him the more for parricide, that he saw himself raised above me by my kindnesses. What so great a crime did his brothers commit, whom he drove to death? Or what evidence of this kind was found against them, such as is found against him? But does the parricide dare to interrupt and shout and try to wrap the truth in tricks? Beware, Varus, I warn you; beware his feigned tears and groans composed by art and pressed out by no grief. This is the man who took from me my fatherly affection, when, with feigned fear, he warned me to beware of Alexander—saying that the minds of very many were agreeing with him, and that my presence should not be rashly entrusted to everyone. He pretended to look around at everything, to conduct me even to my bed, to sift and examine each person. He was the dispenser of my sleep and the servant of my security, in whom I placed my comfort, and by whose services I relieved my grief for those who were killed; I thought he was giving those back to me, taking away my sorrow, and pleasing my devotion. He was my protector, to whom I entrusted the guarding of my aged body. How I live I do not know, how I escaped so great a plotter, with what blandishments he had surrounded me, with what frauds he held me bound, so that I entrusted myself to this one man whom alone I should have guarded against. It is incredible to me that I escaped; I do not seem to be alive, I think it a dream. For who would believe either that he would be so ungrateful, to whom I had entrusted all power over myself, or that I could escape if Antipater did not wish it? Yet I thought I had been made safer by his favor. But what unhappiness—curse it!—makes those whom I loved most rise up against me? I lament the misfortune of my house, Varus; I weep for my loneliness; I groan at the force of so great a grief. Yet so great is the bitterness of the crime of parricide that I will let no one escape, whoever has thirsted for my blood, even if evidence of attempted parricide is brought forward against all my sons.” As he said this, the speaker's voice was cut off by indignation and grief alike. At once Antipater, raising his head—for he lay before his father's feet as if struck and wounded, not daring to rise—cried out and said: “You, father, accuse in anger; but I have no greater defense than the testimony of your accusation, because I was always the guardian of your safety. So you have supplied a defense for me in your role as accuser. For how am I a parricide, whom you yourself confess to have been your protector? Or how circumspect and astute, whom you charge as the contriver of parricide? It would be the height of folly to have thought of what is execrable among men and cannot go unpunished with God. Or I could have been taught by my brothers' example that there would be no escape from so great a crime, since a crime of this kind finds no hiding place and escapes no punishment—for they too paid the penalty for such great ill will toward you. And them, as you say, a certain envy drove to parricide, because they saw me preferred to themselves, to whom the nobility of their mother's line gave spirit to claim the kingdom as owed them by maternal succession, and to demand back what you had taken from them. What of that kind is there in me, who knew to hope for the kingdom only from you, to seek your judgment, to please you alone? What was there that would drive me to dare anything against your safety? Desire for the kingdom? But I was reigning. Suspicion of hatred? But I was loved. Pain at an injury? But I was preferred. If the mere fear of my preference armed them for parricide, I shall be acquitted; for those who are preferred do not know how to think of parricide, but only how to be hated. Unless perhaps some fear of you drove me. But I, as your own voice testifies, knew no fear but fear for you. For what should I fear, who was the servant of your security and the dispenser of your rest? Or did lack of money and need compel me, which usually urges robbery on the needy? But you had given me what would abound not only for the present but for all time, and had sent me rich to Rome, so that the kings of kings might declare that the leadership of rule, not of riches, was with them. Indeed I won for you Fabatus, administrator of Roman affairs and Caesar's intimate; and though he was driven by a huge sum from Syllaeus to attack you, I so changed him that he became your defender and the betrayer of the man who tempted him. Through whom, father, were the plotters against your safety discovered? How then am I a parricide, I who caught Corinthus, the guard of your body, lurking—removed the plotter, brought those who denied to confession? I could have refrained from thinking of parricide and still had the fruit of parricide, had I kept silent. But even if the savagery of beasts, the fury of fierce wild animals, were in me, I could have been tamed by such great kindnesses of yours, so as to place no help except in the protection of your safety, to return you for everything at least love alone, to shield you with my body, to enclose you, if it could be done, in my inmost heart. You had preferred to your nobler sons one less noble by his mother's stock; you had called my mother, an exile from the kingdom, back into the kingdom; and you held me no longer as successor to the rule but as a partner. Wretched me, on whom your liberality had poured so many goods that envy followed! Most foolish I, who left you, father, if room has been given to envy and power to the plotters! For while I lingered long for your safety, I betrayed my own; and yet I have nothing to blame myself for. You ordered me, father, to go away; for you I was abroad, father, so that Syllaeus would not circumvent your old age, would not drive you from the kingdom while you lived, would not attack your safety before Caesar. Rome is witness to my devotion; Caesar too, ruler of the world, censor of all and judge of my heart, who used to call me ‘the lover of my father.’ Bear witness, Caesar, to what I said about my father before you, before whom alone I could have done harm. Bear witness for me, I say, you who pronounced on others. You did not think a parricide should be concealed, but investigated. O, if only your presence might favor me! But you are absent and far away, and I am judged by my father without you. Yet be present, and you are present in your letters: I offer your writings, which parricides usually fear. I bring your letter, such as those bring out who wish a parricide not to be hidden. Take, father, Caesar's letter; let him instruct you, who once avenged you. Take Caesar's writings, stronger than all arguments. What you once used for vengeance, use now for safety. So I bring these lines as witnesses of my innocence: that right hand never deceived you; that right hand of Caesar set the diadem on you, did not take it away; that hand of Caesar restored to you the kingdom you had cast down. Caesar could earlier have hated me, had he found me like my brothers; but he came to know me and pronounced me the interpreter without whom, had I not been at Rome, Syllaeus would have won. To him I am today handed over; to him, wretched, I pay the penalty. Remember, father, that I did not sail of my own will. I saw the pits of the plotters already being prepared for me; yet I preferred, father, that I rather than you be endangered. Nor do I shudder at the danger to my life; but before you, father, I grieve to be endangered as if your enemy. Yet I am endangered if before you even Caesar's testimony is endangered. These, then, are the evidences of my defense I use. I do not appeal to Caesar as if to be heard, but I implore him as one to be acquitted. But if you think a trial must be held, see, my father, I came to you after Caesar; I hurried to you from Caesar. Would that I had never gone away from you! But you, father, without knowing it, exposed me to dangers when you ordered me to go. I am here, father, and I do not think the truth for your safety should be sought perfunctorily from lighter witnesses. Let those not prejudge who can fear torture, nor those who can despise it. ‘Every man is a liar,’ said Scripture. I bring the incorruptible testimony of the elements. I come to you over seas and lands, having suffered nothing anywhere. As a parricide I should not have escaped, were I guilty. Let heaven acquit me before you, father, which did not strike with lightning; the sea, which did not drown; the earth, which did not swallow. Through these I come to you safe, father—these from which even those escape not who are not parricides of their own fathers. The opening of the earth devoured Dathan and Abiram, yet they had not attacked their own father. As Absalom fled, the earth hung him on the branches of its tree, so that he would not reach his father; had he reached him, he would have escaped. I have come to you, and I am still in danger. David avenged his parricide because he could not save him; I do not ask to be avenged of my enemies and slanderers so as to call them to torture: let them pay the penalty of slander. One thing I ask, father: do not believe the tortures of others; seek tortures against me from myself. Hang up your defendant; let the inquiry of truth enter my entrails; let the cords of torture go down into my body and inmost parts; let the blood flow that usually cries out against parricide; let fire be brought to my guilty limbs. Why do you hesitate, father? If you spare me, you pronounce me innocent; if you refrain from torture, you acquit me of the charges. He is no parricide who is thought worthy of a simple death. Or if you spare me as a son and have compassion on limbs begotten of you, they are not your limbs that are instruments of cruelty.” When he had said this, he finished speaking with great weeping and lamentable groaning, and with the loudest wailing he moved Varus and everyone to pity. Herod alone was moved by no tears, and himself refrained from weeping, unbending toward pardon, intent on the inquiry, seeking vengeance.

After Antipater's speech, at the king's command, Nicolaus followed, to answer his tricks cleverly and to draw away from pity those who had been bent by it. He turned back on Antipater the odium of his brothers' death, pleading that if pity moved anyone, it was right to pity those who, destroyed by his frauds, demanded vengeance. If they acquitted one man, the whole royal house would be brought into danger: brothers, all the relatives, and the king himself, whose life he had not spared. So, turning to the tricks of orators, as in an epilogue designed to move pity, he raised from the dead the souls of the slain, to fill the benches with pitiable complaint: that they had died innocent, through grave witnesses suborned, letters composed, and a father deceived by fraudulent speeches, who believed a son he did not think capable of lying about his brothers. Now, he said, the man who had not believed his brothers' tortures offered his own—he who had loaded them with chains so that they could not attend the hearing, had a sentence passed against them in their absence, and had them killed while they were far away, so that their father should not pity them. So nothing would remain if he escaped—a man skilled in pouring parricidal poisons into the bowels of his own, in changing the minds of men, who had roused even Pheroras, always most loving toward his brother Herod, to a deadly parricide against him. When Nicolaus had added very many other things to these to rouse emotion and had finished speaking, Antipater was asked by Varus whether he wished to reply. He answered nothing but: “God is my witness that I have done no harm.” Then Varus ordered the poison to be brought and given to one of those who had already been condemned to death. When he had drunk it, he died at once. A report on this was sent to Caesar, and Antipater was put in chains by his father's command. Yet even then he was not free of plotting. For just then he was attempting to endanger Salome by trickery, through letters that Antipater had composed in Salome's name, full of insults against the king, and had ordered to be carried by a slave of Antiphilus to Acme, a maidservant of Julia, Caesar's wife, so that Acme would send them to the king as if they had been delivered to her. The fraud would almost have succeeded in destroying the woman, had not a letter of Acme to Antipater been found, which betrayed the trick, written in this way: “As you wished, I have written to your father and sent those letters; and I have no doubt that the king will rise up to endanger his sister. Repay my service once you have obtained the result you wished.” When this letter was discovered, the king was led to suspect that Alexander too had been attacked by his brother with letters composed by the same art; and, exasperated by excessive agitation, he contracted a serious illness. Seeing himself pressed by this danger, he wrote Antipas, one of his sons, as heir of the rule, preferring him to Archelaus and Philip, the elder sons, since Antipater by tricks and deceits had made them too suspect to their father. To Caesar he left a thousand talents, with gifts and presents added; to his wife and sons, freedmen and friends, he gave fifty; nor did he leave his sister Salome without a share in his gifts. The illness went from bad to worse and grew harsher with time, aggravated daily by the troubles of feeble old age. For he bore a body weighed down by no fewer than seventy years and afflicted too by frequent grief of mind, wounded by so many parricides, which it was the extreme of misery either to have detected in his sons or to have inflicted. Yet the fever of an incurable sickness was that Antipater, still alive, was feared. Contempt too grew daily, because the images of Caesar and the likenesses of animals placed in the temple against the law were pulled down, chiefly at the instigation of Judas and Matthias, teachers of the youth, who, when their plans were known and others had joined them, said that the time had come to avenge the injury of the violated law: let the sacrilegious man pay the penalty, who thought whatever was lawful for power was right, and who, not inclined by religion but lifted up by pride, had exercised his lust for doing what he wished in the inner parts of the temple as if it were a right. And although divine vengeance was hastening his death, still it seemed noble if they proved also the freedom of the holy temple by defending the observances of their fathers' law; nor should anyone be called back by fear of danger, since even to die for the ancestral law is a badge of immortality. Those who first set about pulling down the golden eagle fixed above the top of the gate were arrested and brought to the king. When they were asked whom they had wished to obey in undertaking so great a deed, they answered: the law of their fathers. When he asked again what they relied on to come so cheerfully when they were being called to the danger of death, they answered: the rewards of piety and devotion, whose recompense would be paid to those who sought death for their ancestral rite. He could no longer bear the constancy of their answer; but, his indignation rising above his illness so that he overcame his weakness, he went out to an assembly of the people, and there, bringing them before the people as guilty of sacrilege, he began to accuse them, saying that greater things were suspected from such deeds. Even if these were not proved, still all, each fearing for himself, begged that the authors who had been arrested should pay the penalty, and that he should not proceed against the rest, lest the inquiry disturb more people, strangers and innocent. So, being asked, he passed sentence on those present that they be burned alive. From this his trouble increased, and the force of a graver illness consumed his whole body with various sufferings. There was a violent fever, an unbearable itching, continual pains of the inner bowels without any intermission; he was tormented in the middle of his neck; his feet were weighed down with dropsy; the hidden parts of his body swarmed with worms, here and there over the whole body; his breathing was heavy and his sighs deadly. The matter was a sign that the penalty for an unjust parricide and a sacrilegious condemnation was being exacted. Yet he did not give way in spirit, and struggled against his sufferings from desire to live. He went beyond the Jordan to the heat of the hot springs, but they did no good. The Asphaltite lake, healing for many, held the sick man without any benefit. There, while he was being bathed with a great deal of oil, his body relaxed and loosened, he turned up his eyes like a dying man, his voice failed, and no sense remained; but roused by the noise of those crying out, he recovered, and wishing to return to his own, when he came to the district of the place called Jericho, harried by black bile and as it were threatening death itself, he devised a monstrous crime, by which the people would be sent down as offerings to the dead for him. For he had long before ordered all the more noble men from all Judea to be gathered from every village into one place; when the order had been obeyed, he ordered them to be shut up in the hippodrome. Summoning Salome and her husband Alexas, he entrusted them with a legacy of blood, saying that his death would be a joy to the peoples of the Jewish nation; and therefore he demanded of his own a device by which his epitaph would be most splendidly celebrated: that as soon as he had breathed his last, they should order all those who were held shut up to be killed at once. So there would be no one in all Judea and in every house to whom his death would not bring tears, since he would have left all households an inheritance of mourning; while they lamented the death of their own, they would seem to be paying the king his due rites, and so the joy of public wishes would be hindered by domestic griefs. And lest the execution of his wicked commands fail, he ordered fifty drachmas to be given to the soldiers, so that, with such a wage set on the crime, the soldiers would not refuse the deadly service, setting the profit of the reward against the horror of the execution. He was already almost yielding to his torments from the burden of so great a sickness, but he was awaiting the fateful reply of the embassy. It reported that punishment had been taken of Acme at Herod's complaint, and that Antipater, convicted of parricide, had been condemned to death; yet, if he were driven from his country and kingdom, his father might grant him leave to flee, if he wished, Caesar ordered—passing sentence on the crime and leaving the decision to devotion. Nature had nearly resolved the necessity of parricide; for when he had recovered a little, given power to punish as he wished, while he was considering the manner of death, racked by pains he had longed for the day of death to come quickly. So he asked for an apple and also a knife, as he used to cut fruit with it, to take some refreshment; and raising himself a little and leaning on his elbow, he lifted the knife, wishing to strike himself; but Achiab ran up and stopped the blow, and the whole house resounded with mourning, so that outside Herod was thought to have died. Antipater exulted at the sound of lamentation and asked the guards set over him to release him from his chains; but the officer in charge not only refused what was asked but reported it to the king. He, crying out that he was being insulted while still alive, sent executioners to kill Antipater, ordered him, once slain, to be buried in Hyrcania, and changed his will again, appointing Archelaus, the elder of the brothers, as king, and leaving the tetrarchy to Antipas. So he died five days after Antipater, having held the kingdom thirty-seven years from the time he was appointed to rule by the Romans, and thirty-four years from the time he removed Antigonus, his rival for the kingdom—would that he had been as happy in his household life as in public success! For abroad fortune favored him so that, a private man, he was taken up into the kingdom, enjoyed it through many courses of years, and—what is hard while keeping the use of power—he died leaving to his children the succession of the rule, which he himself had not received from his own. But within his house he was most unhappy, filling it with the bitter blood and grief of his own people. Yet his last cruelty found no execution: by this one deed Salome blotted out the earlier mockeries of her crimes, that she released all those whom the king had ordered to be struck down, saying that the king had afterwards repented of his deadly order, revoked his earlier commands, and ordered that all be released to their homes.

Afterwards, an assembly of the soldiers and the rest of the people having been gathered in the amphitheater, a declaration was made about the king's death. Ptolemy came forward, who had clung to the king's friendship among the most faithful to the very end, and, bringing the ring that he had taken from the dead man's finger, he praised the king and urged the people to calm; and he opened to them a letter in which the king, entreating the soldiers most faithful to him, urged them to show goodwill and favor to his successor. Then the tablets were opened and the will was read: Philip was named heir of the region of Trachonitis and the neighboring places; tetrarch, Antipas; king, Archelaus—on condition, however, that they carry his ring to Caesar and reserve to him the decision and confirmation of all his arrangements. His will would be valid only if Caesar approved; the rest he ordered to be kept according to his earlier wills. At once the soldiers raised a shout applauding Archelaus; he was immediately surrounded by a ring of guards; they promised goodwill and pledged loyalty. After this the funeral was arranged fittingly and magnificently, with all the display of royal wealth sent ahead to grace the funeral procession. The bier was all of gold and set with gems, gleaming with a covering of purple; the body was covered with a purple double cloak, fastened by a brooch flashing with precious stones; the diadem was on his head and a golden crown above it, a scepter in his right hand, so that you would think him alive. A Thracian column went in front; the Germans and Gauls of the royal bodyguard kept military order, girt with arms just as if they were going out to war, but with faces full of sorrow, and they followed like mourners. The rest of the force followed in its usual dress and accustomed array, the commanders and centurions accompanying alike. Five hundred of the slaves and freedmen of the royal house also scattered spices, so that the whole road was fragrant with a sweet scent; the king's sons and a very great crowd of relatives surrounded the bier. He was buried in Herodium (as he himself had ordered), which was two hundred stadia from the place where he ended his life, escorted with great deference by all over so great a distance—but not by all with equal feeling; for fear had wrung out the service, not desire; grief at least held its judgment free within itself. Such was Herod's end.