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It's 38 BC. We're at a mountain hideout in the Kingdom of Judea. The caves in these sheer limestone cliffs offer a safe retreat for the local rebels. They are fighting their country's new ruler. It's been nearly two years since Herod was named King of the Jews by his Roman bosses, but he still doesn't have full possession of his kingdom. As the fighting has intensified, Herod has been losing patience.
These caves have long been used as homes, with rooms chiseled into the rock. The rebels are here to regroup. After losing a battle at the village of Arbel, near the Lake of Galilee, they huddle with their families. At least here they can rest and keep warm. But as dawn breaks, they hear cavalry somewhere up above. Surely they're safe here, though. Horses can't scale cliffs, and any enemies at ground level can easily be picked off from this elevated position.
Suddenly, at the mouth of the cave, the young lookout screams. The others gawp as they see human faces staring in at them. It's impossible. Half a dozen soldiers are outside, apparently suspended in midair. Their weapons—bows, arrows, javelins—are aimed at the rebels and their families. One of the soldiers hurls a grappling hook at the sentry. Its sharp edges catch on his clothing, and before he can react, he's being dragged out of the opening.
and into the void. Flaming rags are then thrown into the cave. The rebels back away, then turn tail and run into the tunnels. They hurry through the network of passages and right into the hands of the enemy forces. Outside, bodies litter the earth. Fresh blood is drying under the fierce sun. When the rebels look up, they see a tangle of iron chains and winches. They look like snakes, criss-crossing the cliff face.
Attached to the chains are wooden crates with soldiers crammed inside them, roaring like caged animals. A man in the finest battle dress is approaching one particular rebel and his family. They cower at the entrance to their cave. The warrior is King Herod, and he offers to spare the rebel family, but only if the father surrenders. The children plead with their dad. One steps out from behind his legs.
But the rebel shakes his head and draws his sword. Quick as a flash, he kills his own son, and then his wife and his six other children. The soldiers move to overpower him, but anything is better than falling into the hands of Herod. The man cuts his own throat and topples off the cliff to join his family on the rocks below. From Noisa, this is part two of the Herod story. And this is Real Dictators.
In the mid-first century BC, the Kingdom of Judea is in the grip of civil war. Nabor is pitted against Nabor. The shocking account of the patriarch who kills his family rather than surrender is told by the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus in his account of Herod's reign. Dr. Tessa Rajak. The drama of it all is unbelievable and Josephus tells it as a drama.
History and sensationalism were, well, they're never that far from each other. But in those days, what you read in your historians also covered what we might read in the popular papers or see on telly. We considered Gessievers' perspective and the nature of the sources he relied on and produced in part one. In this case...
He captures how it must have felt for civilians caught between Herod's forces and the rebel soldiers loyal to the high priest Antigonus. Dr. Adam Marszak: The civil war really divided Herod's supporters from Antigonus' supporters, one side of the country from the other. And if you were on Herod's side, the war was great. This was a war of liberation. This was a war of conquest. This was a war of justly putting your king on the throne.
If you were not on his side, if you were on the side of Antigonus, this was a war of foreign occupation. This was a war of conquest. This was an unjust war. This was a war of a tyrant. And better to die a free person than to live under an unjust king. Herod has always known that achieving his ambition to become king of Judea would be the fight of his life. His background doesn't work in his favor.
He was born in the desert region of Idumea, where his father, Antipater, was a politically savvy clan leader. His mother is an Arab princess, and the family are only recent converts to Judaism. Many Jews will simply never accept Herod. They believe their rulers should be descendants of the ancient King David, and they certainly won't support a man put in place by the Romans.
Herod's military campaign is being funded by the Roman Senate and his close friend, Mark Antony. Via Herod, they want to regain control of this small but strategically important part of the Eastern Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Herod's enemy, Antigonus, is backed by rebel Judeans and also, crucially, the skilled armies of Rome's geopolitical rival, the Parthian Empire.
For Herod, the conflict is deeply personal as well as political. His father was poisoned by plotters who supported Antigonus' coup, while his older brother killed himself in Parthian custody. And Herod recently received another piece of bad news. His younger brother, Joseph, has died in battle. When the Parthians sent just Joseph's head back to the family, instead of the entire body needed for a traditional burial, Herod's rage cannot be contained.
His forces gather near Jericho. Two Roman legions are fighting alongside his own troops. Herod knows that the general who killed his brother is among the enemy camped out nearby. But rather than seek to extract him, he orders the use of stones and siege engines to crush the men where they sleep, trapping countless soldiers under the rubble. Herod then has the general's head sent to Antigonus in Jerusalem. It's a harbinger of the havoc he plans to inflict on the city.
But in the course of the fighting near Jericho, Herod has been wounded himself, struck in the side by a spear. He needs treatment. Josephus records that the king and his men take over a bathing house, where he is anointed with herbal oils to aid his recovery. But it's far from a restful experience.
He's relaxing. Maybe we could even imagine that he's listening to some music or having some poetry narrated to him. And all of a sudden, these guys come out, sword in hand,
Herod is standing there with nothing but his birthday suit on, and they're standing there with their swords. Why does Josephus tell us this story? Because it really happened? Maybe. It also could be that he's trying to emphasize this way in which Herod was such an intimidating figure, that he had such charisma and such personal power that he could literally stare down the enemy with nothing but his birthday suit.
Soon after his lucky escape from the bathhouse, Herod and his men march on Jerusalem. He hasn't seen the city since he fled at night two and a half years earlier. For this showdown, Herod has up to 30,000 of his own men, along with several Roman legions, plus cavalrymen from Syria. But the Parthian and rebel troops led by Antigonus are prepared to fight every bit as hard as he is. A siege is coming.
If there is anything that the Romans are really good at, it's siege warfare. And by the time that they are helping Herod out, they have had several decades of their own civil wars to practice.
So you should imagine siege towers, ballistae, battering rams, ramps. Meanwhile, if you're in Jerusalem looking out, what you're doing is you're frantically bringing in as much food as possible. You've got an advance notice that they're coming. So you've been basically ripping anything edible out of the countryside, probably even burning what you can't take because you don't want to feed your enemy.
Herod's forces set up camp around the city walls. They build towers from which the artillery units take aim. They bombard the defenses using mechanical throwers known as wild asses. Due to their powerful kick, the two sides also fight in tunnels underneath the city. As the weeks pass, soldiers and civilians in Jerusalem face famine, but Antigonus still won't give in. At least, not yet. Finally, by midsummer of 37 BC,
After almost five months of siege warfare, sections of the city wall are breached. Herod's forces approach the temple. Antigonus and his supporters use an underground passage to retreat from Temple Mount to the Barris Citadel. They barricade themselves inside, but Antigonus knows the battle is lost. He eventually emerges from his hiding place, and he pleads for mercy.
He's shackled by the Roman invaders, who await instructions from Herod on how to proceed. Right now though, Herod's hands are full. As he rides through the city, the narrow streets are littered with bodies and wreckage, and now his men are looting. He is no stranger to war, but this savagery is not to be welcomed. Once the troops leave, he must rule over their victims. If he doesn't get things under control now, there'll be no hope of gaining the trust of those left alive.
He promises the soldiers that if they stop their rampage, he will pay them all they are due from his own fortune. As word spreads, the city calms, but by the time the violence finally ends, thousands of civilians lie dead. The diadem ribbon proclaiming Herod's status is still fastened around his now bloodstained forehead, but all around him, Jerusalem lies in ruins.
This is war and it's brutal and it's awful and it's terrible. And that's what Josephus records. He really records this full-scale looting and sack of Jerusalem, which Herod might try to prevent, but is inevitable. Herod has Antigonus transported to Rome in chains, alongside a large gift of silver for Mark Antony. The Roman leader has Antigonus crucified, a brutal death.
never before inflicted on a foreign ruler. Meanwhile, Herod starts to take control of his new kingdom. It isn't exactly easy. Professor Bruce Chilton: "I think that for the rest of his life, Herod was marked by this conflict.
as well as the fact that the Parthians resorted to remarkably brutal methods in their opposition, which saw, among other things, the death of one of Herod's other brothers. This was a trauma, I think, from which he actually never fully recovered. He still was remarkably vital. He would establish himself as king.
but he would actually never thereafter establish a relationship that you could regard as being trusting. The whole premise of client kingship, which is what's being established in Judea, is that the Romans are trying to control a vast territory on the cheap.
He needs to secure the border. He needs to secure the trade routes. He needs to play nice with his neighbors. He needs to make sure the Parthians don't act up. He needs to send tax money to Rome. And then he has his Jewish subjects and his Jewish subjects expect certain things from him. He has to support the temple cult. He has to live an at least ostensibly Jewish life.
He has to be a Roman client king, a Hellenistic monarch, and a Jewish king at the same time. Herod has already made significant moves in his attempt to win over the local population. Chief among them is engagement to Princess Mariamne. He even took time out from the siege of Jerusalem to marry her. Mariamne is from the esteemed Hasmonean dynasty.
Any offspring she bears Herod will be able to draw on the astute political know-how of his family, as well as her royal blood. This should create an enduring dynasty, but it doesn't take long for cracks to show in the union.
It was a success initially, it seemed. However, even from the beginning, she, together with her mother, acted very much in the way that the high priests had always behaved, and that is they looked for ways in which they could prefer members of their own family. And this resulted in jealousies inside the royal court of Herod.
For Herod, uniting both his household and his country is going to be an uphill struggle. He has ambitious plans for Judea. In time, he will establish an innovative new port, commission luxurious retreats for his inner circle, and rebuild the 900-year-old Temple in Jerusalem. But first, it's time to bolster the country's defenses.
The first projects we notice are all about securing the countryside. So he builds a string of fortresses on his eastern border. But those are also jobs. And I think one of the things that we would be mistaken in is if we don't see some segment of the population come around to Herod's way of thinking, primarily because he gives them jobs. I think he has to spend the first 10 years of his reign
really securing his claim to legitimacy, both from an economic perspective and from a kind of political legitimacy perspective. Though Herod is king, the position of high priest carries almost equal influence. It's essential that he chooses the right man for the job. His new mother-in-law, Alexandra, has her own preferred candidate, Mariamne's 16-year-old brother, Aristobulus.
Herod is wary of granting his brother-in-law such a prestigious position. There's a risk that Aristobulus might eclipse him. But Alexandra is relentless. First she recruits Mariamne to lobby for her brother. She then calls on Fabers further afield, writing first to Cleopatra and then to Mark Antony. To the latter she sends a portrait of her dashing son. Rumors are that Antony has an eye for young men. Herod is comprehensively outmaneuvered.
In 36 BC he reluctantly gives Aristobulus the job. It may be the most popular political move he's made yet.
The people are thrilled. It's a feast of tabernacles. There's this huge outcry of, oh, finally, we have this wonderful, amazing young man. He's so handsome. He's so amazing. He's a wonderful high priest. Finally, a Hasmonean back on the high priest seat. Herod had to worry that Aristobulus was going to murder him and take the throne. This outcry of support for him by the Jewish people in Jerusalem must have further solidified his fears.
The following year, Alexandra decides to throw a party, and the whole family are invited. The venue? Herod's newly finished Pleasure Palace, near the oasis of Jericho. The complex includes sunken gardens, shady courtyards, and more than one swimming pool. Herod's Hasmonean in-laws have made the short journey from Jerusalem for some quality time together. Mariamne is there with her newborn twins. Alexandra is living it up.
and Aristobulus, the popular new high priest, is being feted like a guest of honor. Herod seems to have warmed to his brother-in-law since giving him the top job, and he makes a special effort to talk to him throughout the long, extravagant banquet. Anybody watching would assume the hatchet has been buried. Once the feast is over and the sun begins to set, it's time for the pool party. The guests disrobe and begin sliding into the dark, cooling waters of the resort's largest pool.
At first, Aristobulus resists joining them. It seems he's self-conscious about stripping off in front of strangers, in particular Herod's burly bodyguards, who have already joined their master for a dip. But Herod beckons him to join them. It's dark. No one will be able to see anything. The pool sparkles in the low light of the torches, as Aristobulus lets the cool water surround him.
Soon the others are splashing and playing, shrieks of delight bouncing off the stone walls. Nobody seems to hear the sound of Aristobulus going under the water, kicking and flailing as he struggles to get back to the surface. Something, a weed perhaps, has caught hold of his ankles. Far too late, Aristobulus realizes what's actually holding him down there. He fights back with all his strength, but Herod's bodyguards are stronger.
Herod bellows at his guards to drag the lifeless body out of the pool, ordering them to pump the water from the young man's lungs. But it's in vain. Mariamne and Alexandra wail by the poolside. How could such a terrible accident have befallen the family's golden boy? Herod, for his part, seems deeply distressed. At the funeral, no one weeps more than he does, but his nearest and dearest know crocodile tears when they see them.
"But Mariamne has to know, Alexandra has to know, it wasn't an accident. I don't think that they would have been duped for a second. From that moment on, Harrod and his wife, Harrod and his mother-in-law are enemies." Alexandra vows to stay alive long enough to avenge her son's death, and once again she calls on Cleopatra for help.
The Queen of Egypt has long believed the Judean kingdom should be hers. Anything she can do to destabilize and discredit Herod brings her closer to claiming back this territory. Cleopatra has heard the rumors about the high priest's suspicious drowning. Now she uses them as leverage, pushing Herod to return to her the palm groves and balsam plantations around Jericho. She even visits Judea herself for a series of talks with the king.
The two rulers butt heads, each desperate to outmaneuver the other. At one point, Herod considers poisoning Cleopatra, but decides that breaking Mark Antony's heart might be too great a risk. Cleopatra, meanwhile, according to Josephus, tries to seduce the Judean king. Herod apparently is the only man ever to resist her charms. More likely what it is, is that they weren't trying to seduce each other sexually.
They were playing that wonderful game of political seduction. Herod is sitting there trying to survive, trying to ingratiate himself with Cleopatra because he has to, but also trying to not say anything that's going to come back to bite him later. And Cleopatra is using all of her skill to try to get him to do so. And that's the dance that they probably were doing. By the time she leaves Judea, Cleopatra has come to an agreement with Herod.
He will lease from her the lands in question, at a sizeable cost. But she is not long for this world. Support for Marc Antony in Rome has dwindled. In 32 BC, Antony's rival Triumphia Octavian declares war on the Egyptian monarch. The following year, after a crushing defeat at the Battle of Actium, Antony and Cleopatra both commit suicide. Only six years after taking back Judea from the Parthians,
Everything Herod has worked for is once again at stake. Now he must win over Octavian, the man who just defeated one of his oldest friends. When the two men come face to face, Herod opts to employ a kind of humble brag, downplaying his own status while emphasizing how useful he still is to Rome as a loyal client king. He takes off his diadem. He comes in simple clothing.
He looks with his eyes downcast and he says to Octavian, I was the client of Antony. And as good a client as I was to Antony, I will be an even better client to you. And by the way, I'm a pretty damn good king.
And Octavian says to him, rise, Herod. I'm going to confirm you in your kingship. And in fact, not only am I going to confirm you as king of the Jews, as my new client, I'm going to enlarge your kingdom. I'm going to make you an even more wealthy, more powerful king because I trust you and because I know that you're the best man for the job. Herod will be as good as his word. He'll name cities, fortresses, and even his new port after Octavian, who will soon become Emperor Augustus and...
he'll make sure the Roman Empire continues to get its tax income. Herod returns home in good spirits, but all is not well on the domestic front. He's always had a jealous streak when it comes to Mariamne. Usually when he goes overseas, Herod leaves orders for his wife to be kept under lock and key. This time, though, he added an extra insurance policy. Before departing, he told his servants that if he should die on the trip, Mariamne should be put to death as well.
Unsurprisingly, his wife isn't best pleased when she learns about the order. At this point, Herod's sister Salome steps into the picture. From her perspective, the marital rift is an opportunity for a bit of meddling. Salome has never been keen on her brother's wife and the influence that the Hasmoneans wield over Herod. Salome tells him that Mariamne has been plotting in his absence, and may even have had an affair
Herod is distraught and furious. In 29 BC, Mariamne is sentenced to death by strangulation.
So we've got this great Greek tragedy here. Two characters, Mariame and Herod, destined to be together. The most beautiful woman in the kingdom, the most capable man in the kingdom, bound together by marriage. This passionate romance that turns into passionate hatred, which turns into passionate murder, which afterwards turns into passionate remorse. As Josephus recounts it, once the reality of what he's done sinks in, Herod is wracked with guilt.
He describes Herod as ranting and raving in the palaces that he occupied and calling out her name and being inconsolable. It's rumored that Herod even has Mariamne's body preserved in honey so that he can keep it by his bed. But is he really as heartbroken as he seems?
The fact is that he married very shortly afterwards and had eight wives beyond Maryamne and many, many children, complicating his succession. Later, he even married another woman named Maryamne. In his later years, Herod will become a sort of Henry VIII of the Holy Land, a womanizer of quite literally biblical proportions. His up-and-down love life reflects an increasingly chaotic lifestyle in general.
One minute he's doing his best to ingratiate himself with the people, the next he's slaughtering those that resist him. More and more paranoid, he doubles his personal bodyguard to two thousand men. He even starts going about in disguise, attempting to find out what his subjects really think of him. "A huge chunk of the population was never going to accept him."
There's another segment of the population that probably said, "Egh, they're all bad. I mean, what's the difference? You know, everyone sacks Jerusalem. These guys are all corrupt. They're all awful." And then there's probably that whole chunk in the middle which probably says something like, "Okay, what can you do for me? What are you going to do for me now?" It's not all doom and gloom. Herod summons the great legal and logistical minds of the day to his court.
With their help, he sets about developing new policies and infrastructure projects. These include the giant construction works that will prove an enduring part of his legacy. It's these that earn him the title Herod the Great.
If you look at the scale of Herod's building programs, you really have to put them next to Augustus. They rightly belong there. Herod's tomb at Herodion is really the only real comparable tomb is Augustus' tomb in Rome. Herod's palace at Jericho. You really have to look at Hadrian's palace in Tivoli or Domitian's palace on the Palatine. These are his comps, so to speak, in the real estate world.
Caesarea Maritima, a new port on the Judean coast, is one of Herod's most impressive projects. There is no natural harbour anywhere along this stretch of shoreline, so the king's engineers create breakwaters from lime and ash and set them into concrete foundations under water. It's an extraordinary feat of engineering. In just seven years, he's created a thriving city on the site, with markets, roads, baths, a grand palace sits on a jetty,
Just inland he builds an aqueduct that supplies the new port with drinking water. And in Jerusalem, the scale of the works is at a whole other level. The second temple complex takes up 36 acres, twice the size of the original site. As the sun shines on the limestone, it is literally dazzling. Beyond the stone ramparts, a bazaar bustles with merchants and pilgrims. It's unrecognizable from the ransacked war zone of two decades earlier.
Eight miles to the south is Herodium, a fortress and palace complex built on a man-made mountain. It's the only place Herod names after himself. It marks the spot where he outsmarted the invaders when he fled Jerusalem 25 years before. It's also where he wants to be buried. None of this architecture, however impressive, has secured Herod's position beyond doubt. Even now, with many of Mariamne's Hasmonean relatives murdered,
The court remains a hotbed of plots and mistrust. Against this backdrop, as he approaches 60, Herod considers the question of succession. With ten wives and no fewer than 18 children, there are plenty of options. The two sons he had with Mariamne have been educated in Rome. He now brings them back to Judea. But the family reunion isn't exactly a success. Young Aristobulus, named for the uncle who drowned in the swimming pool,
can't forgive Herod for their mother's death. Nor can his elder brother Alexander. The boys are somewhat snobbish too. They sneer at their father's provincial education. They spread rumors that he dyes his beard in a bid to appear youthful, and that when they go hunting together, they have to miss on purpose so as not to embarrass him. He may also, they whisper, be dying. Herod doesn't take kindly to such gossip. To show the sons that he has other options,
He recalls from exile his first wife, Doris, and their son, Antipater. Mariamne's boys are furious. They escalate their complaint all the way to Emperor Augustus.
Augustus was baffled because here he was dealing with one of his most competent client kings, and he can't run his own household. Augustus does the best that he can to patch it up, sends them all back to Judea, tells Herod that he should deal with this matter in the way that Herod would like, and essentially makes it clear to Herod that this is not a matter he wants to have to intervene in again.
Privately, Augustus tells Herod that if needs be, he should consider his sons as expendable. At this point something rather interesting happens. Herod's chief biographer reappears. He himself steps into the story that he's been compiling. Remember Nicholas of Damascus, Herod's friend and advisor introduced in part one? Well, he's been there all this time, in the background, keeping notes, writing his history of Herod the Great.
But now, with the long view of his king's legacy perhaps already in mind, Nicholas intervenes. He foresees the damage Herod is doing to his own reputation, and he begs him not to turn on his sons. But his advice goes unheeded. Herod orders Alexander and Aristobulus to be strangled, just like their mother. When the news reaches Emperor Augustus from Judea, it seems to amuse him. It's better to be Herod's pig than his son, he quips.
Augustus was not well known for his sense of humor, but he did on this occasion make a play on words, saying, I'd rather be Herod's pig than his son. And he said that referring both to the dietary laws of Judaism and to Herod's evident recklessness with the way he treated his own family. By this point, Herod's murderous temper has literally become a joke.
Perhaps it's no wonder that hundreds of years later, he'd be known as a kind of pantomime villain. "The problem was, whether devious or straightforward, his instinct was to be murderous, was to eliminate whatever person it was who was opposed to him. On the battlefield, that probably makes good sense. In your own royal court, it does not. And I think that was part of the tragedy of his life." Herod has ample blood on his hands, including that of his own children.
But what of his most infamous act, almost a hundred years after his death? The Gospel writer Matthew will pen the story that most of us associate with the name Herod to this day: the slaughter of the innocents. The paranoid king is threatened by the birth of the baby Jesus. This is because the child is held to be a blood descendant of David, and therefore the legitimate king of the Jews.
Such is the king's fear, he has every child under the age of two in Bethlehem murdered. Historically speaking, there are many different interpretations of this account. The 600 words in the Gospel of Matthew are the sole textual source. The slaughter of the innocents doesn't appear in Josephus' writings. The timing has been debated. Many scholars hold that Herod died in 4 BC, i.e. before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
And yet, the absence of corroborating textual evidence doesn't necessarily mean it didn't. Such brutalities were so common in the period, and in Herod's own life, that they weren't always recorded. And to complicate matters, the name "Herod" will not die out with Herod the Great. It will pass on to his descendants, deployed as a shorthand.
I have argued that this story of a genocidal attack on a village is much more characteristic of Herod's son, Archelaus,
than it is of Herod himself. Now, the motivation to do such a thing, that would be characteristic of Herod the Great. But what's interesting about Herod is that his murderous intent was directed against specific individuals. He, in fact, on many occasions, deliberately attempted to restrain the vengeful tactics of his own soldiers during the course of war. On the other hand, his son, Archelaus,
was well known to do exactly that kind of thing repeatedly. The slaughter of the innocent strongly echoes the Old Testament story in which the baby Moses or Moshe survives a massacre of children ordered by the Pharaoh. So at the very least, the account in Matthew fits into a literary tradition and tells us a huge amount about how Herod was viewed at the time and in the following centuries.
The Herodians were wicked kings. The Herodians were like Pharaoh of old. And so just like Pharaoh slaughtered the innocent, so too does Herod. Herod's final days are marked by other paranoid, vengeful acts. If you're Herod, you have been facing plots real or imagined your entire 30 years on the throne.
The very people you thought you could trust are actually the ones plotting against you. The very people you thought you loved, who you thought loved you, are the ones plotting to kill you. And so Josephus tells of this downward spiral of Herod's regime. He starts suspecting everyone. Beyond Herod's inner circle, rumors are spreading that the king is ailing. For those who oppose him, the time has come to act. It's the middle of the day at the temple in Jerusalem. Worshippers are inside.
While in the surrounding streets, merchants trade with visitors and city dwellers. Suddenly, a group of students pushes past the stalls, brandishing axes. They have heard a rumor that Herod is finally dead. It's time to start a revolution. The students have been fired up by a pair of rabbis, peaching against the conduct of their client king. Herod is no better than a Roman stooge, and they know just what to do about it.
The students stop at the south side of the temple, facing the grand gate. Above it stands a golden eagle, a symbol of the occupiers who bled Judea dry. The students swarm around the gate, attacking the stone walls with their axes. They clamber up on each other's shoulders, smashing whatever they can reach. Finally, one of them is high enough to take aim at the eagle, and it falls onto the stone below, shattering, but already soldiers are advancing.
Some of the protesters escape, but 40 of them are caught and dragged away. The two rabbis at the heart of the action are bound and transported to the amphitheater at Jericho. There, Herod is waiting for them. Rumors of his death may have been exaggerated, but not by much. He's too weak to stand, and he absolutely stinks from whatever illness is consuming him.
After ranting about how much money he spent restoring the temple and reminding the students of his great construction projects, the time comes for the king to pass sentence on them. The rabbis will be burned alive. Their young followers will be beheaded. Outwardly, Herod is as brutal and as strong-willed as ever. But it's clear to anyone who sees him that his time is nearly up. Exactly what's afflicting him, no one is quite sure.
The grim disease comes to be known simply as Herod's Evil. As Josephus sees it, the illness is God's punishment for his sins. Symptoms of gangrene spread through his legs and reached his groin. Fluid built up through his lower body and the stench of his breath indicated his internal organs were affected.
He had taken himself to a spa near the Dead Sea so that he could bathe in oils and mineral water. He fainted when immersed in the hot bath. Herod's pain, it's said, is so intense that he tries to commit suicide with a dinner knife. It's left to his cousin to stay his hand. But despite the excruciating condition, he's scheming up to the last.
He rewrites his will several times, and then less than a week before he dies, he adds his firstborn son Antipater to the kill list. Ironically, the one person the king never mistrusts is his sister Salome, the same sister whose poisonous rumors encouraged him to have his beloved wife Mariamne strangled. And as Josephus records, Herod has one last act of revenge planned.
A scheme that will be enacted from beyond the grave. Knowing that many of his subjects will celebrate when he dies, he devises a plan to ensure the whole country is united in mourning. Just not for the same person. Salome is entrusted with carrying out her brother's final wishes. Hundreds of religious and political leaders are to be brought to the stadium at Jericho and held under armed guard. As soon as the news of his own death is confirmed, they are to be killed as well.
He would say to himself, "What do I have to do? I gave hundreds, thousands of people lifetime employment. I was the greatest Jewish king since Solomon. I enlarged the Temple Mount. I did all of these things for you people and you never accepted me. And you never gave me the chance and you never will accept me. And I did everything you wanted and still." But when Herod does finally breathe his last, the VIPs are given a stay of execution.
Salome disobeys her brother's orders and decides to free them instead. She knows that his successors will need their backing, not to mention their bureaucratic skills, if they are to stand any chance of ruling effectively. While Salome organizes the grandest of state funerals, Herod's heirs await for the reading of his will in Jericho. The final version divides his kingdom amongst some of his children. His son Herod Archelaus takes Judea.
He will prove so unpopular that within a decade Emperor Augustus will remove him. A younger son, Herod Antipas, takes control of Galilee, just as his father did half a century earlier. According to the Bible, he will have John the Baptist beheaded and, along with Pontius Pilate, will pass judgment on Jesus. As for Herod the Great, his legacy will be mixed at best. Within 75 years of his death,
The Jews will rebel, and the Romans will besiege Jerusalem, destroying much of the city and the temple he built. Over the centuries most of his great buildings have been lost, but excavations continue to unearth traces of them. In 2007, what's thought to be his tomb was discovered at Herodium, between two staircases built into the man-made mountain. Experts believe it was modeled on the mausoleums of other great rulers of antiquity,
including Emperor Augustus and Alexander the Great. Herod, I think, merits attention because he brought Judaism together during the period of the Roman Empire.
at a moment where Judea, Judaism, and Jerusalem could easily have been overwhelmed by the greater Roman power. And at the same time, Herod is a working example of how it is that the authority to rule always has to be exerted with a negotiation with the issues of belief and ritual that are involved in a culture.
Herod ruled for a long time and it's a great story. It also explains how Greek rule morphed into Roman rule in that part of the world. He was a wily old operator. He was probably the most colourful, probably the most long-lived and the most important of Rome's so-called client kings.
And so his legacy, I think from his perspective on his deathbed, his legacy must have been a mixed one. It would have been great success and satisfaction, but also real bitterness at the way that despite 30 years of relatively solid and stable rule, the plan that he had devised and that it worked for his entire reign was not coming to fruition.
and that his sons, yes, they were inheriting his throne, but they weren't the sons that he wanted. Being a ruler in the Hellenistic world of any kind would have been incredibly stressful and the stakes were incredibly high. You win or you die. I mean, it's Game of Thrones, really. You either win or you die. Real Dictators will return in the new year with the story of Enver Hodja.
