III. HEROD AND THE RUINS OF THE ASMONEANS, 37-4, B.C.

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Having thus attained dominion over the whole country by his own ambition and violence, together with Roman aid and under the dreaded protection of Roman supremacy, Herod maintained his power almost unchallenged for a period of thirty-four years, until his death. During his reign there were not wanting intelligent men who highly admired his daring energy and his very successful rise in the world; who even discerned in the accidents of his life marks of a special divine protection; who attached themselves to him with unchanging fidelity, and served him gladly with all the abilities which they possessed. Those among his servants who were entrusted with the highest posts of power remained loyal to him until after his death. Such were his secretary, the orator Nicolaus, belonging to an eminent family of Damascus ; his brother Ptolemæus, keeper of the great seal and minister of finance, and a number of military officers. In Nicolaus, in particular, he possessed a servant of inestimable ability and faithfulness, whose equal he would have sought in vain. Famous also in the sphere of heathen literature, this personage5 was himself sprung from a very wealthy family. At an early age he was a highly educated Peripatetic, and was well versed in history. He was an extremely clever poet, orator, and administrator; he could entertain princes-even Augustus-agreeably; and he was besides, both in! learned pursuits and in public affairs, an absolutely indefatigable worker. He did not seek court

This number is quite firmly established by data so exact as Jos. Bell. Jud. i. 33, 8; Ant. xvii. 8, 1. According to this, therefore, Herod died about three years before the Christian era.-On a new biography of Herod see the Jahrbb. der Bibl. Wiss. viii. P. 230 sq.

2 For instance, when in the last war he went just in time out of a house, whose roof fell in immediately after, or when, unarmed and even unclothed, he escaped from the danger of falling into the hands of armed enemies, as is related at length in Jos. Ant. xiv. 15, 11, 13; cf. xv. 6, 7.

Josephus does not say that he was a Judean; but it is certain that there was a large Judean community in Damascus, to which he might have belonged, p. 239; there was no need for him, however, as a Hellenist, to be a better Judean than his master himself. If the Damascene who, according to Eustathius on Dionys. Periegesis, v. 976, wrote the drama of Zwoavis or

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woavvh, were the same, we should possess a still more distinct proof; for that Nicolaus wrote dramas is also stated by Suidas under Nicolaus; but the same writer's statement that his father Antipater, when on his death-bed, ordered him to sacrifice T A, must not lead us into inferring too much from it.

EE

Cf. Jos. Ant. xvii. 9, 4 (Herod had given Ptolemæus a village near Samaria, xvii. 10, 9); 8, 2; xvi. 7, 2; 9, 5; 10,5, 7.

The trifling contradiction between Ant. xvii. 9, 3, and 4 is insignificant; cf. further Bell. Jud. i. 24, 2; 33, 8; ii. 2, 1, 3 (where the same contradiction also occurs): 4, 3; 5, 1.

5 We are better acquainted with him from the important fragments of his biography, Müller's Fragm. Hist. Græc. iii. pp. 348-355; yet this appears to me not to have been written by himself, but probably by his brother.

service for its rewards or pleasures; on the other hand, though extremely popular and highly esteemed among the most powerful Romans of his time, he always held back like a true Peripatetic in a wise simplicity and retirement, and found his chief pleasure in the occupations of a literary man. When he had once, however, entered the service of Herod, who was about ten years older than himself,' he continued uninterruptedly faithful to him, although he did not always accord with his actions: and in his great work on universal history in one hundred and forty-four books,2 which he certainly began during the lifetime and in part for the entertainment of the king, he described his whole career after its close with as much minuteness as partiality and affection. Though probably Judean in origin, he was, however, in disposition completely heathen, like his sovereign; and it is therefore less surprising that in narrating his master's life he often employs language of concealment or palliation of which even Josephus openly expresses his disapproval.3

If, however, we contemplate the personality of Herod apart from his friends and flatterers, we cannot deny that there have rarely been united in any ruler so much tenacious strength of mind, so much almost inexhaustible address and sagacity, and so much inflexible activity, as were combined in him: even the surname of the Great, though only applied to him subsequently by a misunderstanding of a Greek expression, he at any rate merits within the series of his own relations and in the circuit of the sovereigns of the century. Loving power and command above everything, he was yet not insensible to the blessings of

1 As we learn from his biography, Op. cit. p. 353.

2 The fragments which have been preserved are printed with some new ones of larger extent, now published for the first time in Müller's Fragm. iii. p. 356 sqq. Probably his life of Augustus also originally formed only a section of this gigantic work. Such a writer would certainly be able to call to his aid many tributary hands, and his hundred and forty-four books remind us of the hundred and forty of Livy.

3 Ant. xvi. 7, 1.

4 Josephus first employs this surname in the history of the family of the Herods, Ant. xviii. 5, 4. It might, therefore, be reasonably conjectured that originally the name simply meant, in Hebrew fashion, the elder, in contrast to the younger Herod (Antipas) and others, as for instance 'Eλxías 8 μéyas, Ant. xviii. 8, 4, and in

the exactly corresponding case of Agrippa the Great, Ant. xvii. 2, 2; xviii. 5, 1, 4; xx. 5, 2, we might simply suppose a contrast intended to Agrippa II. as the younger of this name. But if this Agrippa was designated on a coin BACIAETC METAC (Eckhel, Doctr. iii. p. 492), because he once more ruled over all Palestine in its wider extent, it would have been still easier to give Herod a similar title (although the coins of his reign hitherto found do not bear the word METAC), and the origin of this surname may be derived from this source. In that case it only contained the same sort of boast as that of an Indian prince of the present day, who calls himself Mahârâg'â; and in fact Agrippa, at any rate in the last passage cited, Ant. xx. 5, 2, is not called absolutely 8 péyas, but, as on the coin, ὁ μέγας βασιλεύς.

After such

honourable tranquillity and the arts of peace. tedious and desolating struggles, the whole country longed for rest, and accordingly the labours of Herod for the external prosperity and honour of his house and his people found a most happy response in the similar need of repose which was then so forcibly experienced throughout the whole Roman empire. And yet the end of his reign was destined to be practically the end of the new dynasty established by him with such prodigious effort; and what was much worse, his memory was to be justly cursed by his contemporaries and by posterity, and his whole career upon the throne, with all its outward success and splendour, was to be irremediably disastrous and full of affliction so that there has scarcely ever been a sovereign whose life, passed in the enjoyment of all possible power and glory, terminated more painfully in itself or more mischievously for the kingdom at large. The greater the personal sins and incurable errors by the aid of which he had attained power, the more inevitable was it that they should combine with the deeper causes of the irremediable corruption of the hagiocracy, in the form it had then attained, to spin out the eternal thread of human affairs to this melancholy end.

Perverse and sinful, however, as Herod might be upon the throne, through his own fault, it is still a fact not to be overlooked that the period of the history of Israel and the hagiocracy in which his life fell was on its side also too perverse and weak to prevent him from developing and maintaining such dispositions when in power. The gravity of his guilt consisted simply in this,—it was but a single error, yet of a most frightful and detestable nature-viz. that he chose to govern by the aid of all the contradictions and perversions into which the hagiocracy was sinking deeper and deeper. His system as a ruler was to leave the established religion of Israel untouched in outward honour, and he had not the least intention of playing the part of an Antiochus Epiphanes; he knew in fact too well that the fate of that prince would soon overtake himself. As the sovereign of Israel, therefore, he submitted himself outwardly to its religion as far as possible; he even promoted the well-being of its confessors, as far as this course harmonised with his own royal advantage. These objects, however, were only pursued in the same way as any other external interests of life and government; his heart was not remotely touched or guided by the truths of the religion; and neither by his origin or his position did he ever find himself either inwardly or outwardly constrained to adopt them. In the case of the

Asmoneans, their origin in a purely national struggle for the true religion, as well as their priestly descent and their possession of the high-priesthood, led them as strictly as possible to its genuine observance and sanctification; and whenever they diverged from this object, everyone had the right to sharpen their conscience and recall them to their primitive duty. But Herod had been placed on his throne by the Romans; he was a layman; and his position in Israel, therefore, was that of a foreigner, who only adhered to the religion of Israel out of prudence, so far as appeared absolutely necessary. There still lurked in him even a strong element of the coarse tiger nature to which the ancient Idumeans had accustomed themselves, which burst forth with the utmost vehemence when the sole object in view was power and outward honour. He had not the remotest desire himself to be high-priest, and thought he had done quite enough when he filled up the office at his own discretion, and made over to his nominee the duty of caring for sacred things. He did not wish to come into collision with the schools of the Pharisees and others, which were then at the height of success, provided they would only conduct themselves peaceably towards him: but the truths which they taught were a matter of perfect indifference to him. He wanted to be a Judean; but he went much further than previous sovereigns in keeping the people in check by means of foreign mercenaries from distant lands, such as Gallians, Germans, and Thracians. His only object was himself, his own interests and passions, and he considered himself entirely justified in gratifying these, provided only he maintained erect the inward tranquillity and the outward honour of the nation, which the Asmoneans (as he used to say, and in part with truth 2) had been unable to uphold. He was fond of the splendour and the magnanimity of royalty; nor had he the least hesitation in rendering services also to foreigners and heathen; nay, he would even display towards them a special munificence and generosity, as though he found a secret pleasure in thereby indemnifying himself for the Judean constraint which he was in other respects obliged to place upon himself: while, on the other hand, he had a peculiar hatred for the nobly born of his own race (the Eupatridæ, to borrow a Greek expression), and continually persecuted

1 Ant. xvii. 1, 1; 8, 3; Octavian presented him with four hundred Gallic spearmen; Ant. xv. 7, 3.

Cf. Ant. xvii. 6, 3; xv. 11, 1. Besides the cases already cited from his earlier days (p. 410), see those after he

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became king, Bell. Jud. i. 21, 11 sq.; Ant. xv. 9, 2; xvi. 2, 2; and particularly xvi. 5, 3; xvii. 11, 2; and the strong expression of Josephus put off till xix. 7, 3.

them,' as in fact the circumstances of his position required him to do. Such was the attitude in Israel of this despot, still a Judean and yet no longer a Judean, still less an Israelite in the high sense of the word. The real and deeper evils of the time he could not remove, with all his violence and cruelty, for he would not even apprehend them correctly from a distance; and consequently, when the tranquillity which he enforced came to an end with his death, the final overthrow was all the more speedy and desolating. This was in fact only the signal for the inner defects inhering in this as in every hagiocracy to reveal themselves with all the more force. The hagiocracy was not openly and fundamentally contradicted by Herod, although he had at heart, no honour for it, and in some cases even transgressed many of its prescriptions. But it was unable to make him a better and holier man than he was; it had allowed him to grow up with this nature, and during the thirtyfour years of his reign it had not the smallest power to improve him, or make any deeper impression upon him. For it is its peculiar danger to encourage the outward veneration of an oldestablished religion, which is not, however, understood in its real depth or applied in all its vitality. What was only, therefore, a characteristic possibility in the shape offered by the hagiocracy, was hardened in Herod into the most terrible sin; and if it was the guilt of this particular individual to have given practical shape to this offence, the hagiocracy, by the mere fact of its tolerance of him and its inability to arouse any fundamental opposition to him, or even for the sake of outward tranquillity to dispense with him, revealed its own great weakness and helplessness. Herod was cunning enough to see into its feebleness and secretly laugh at its impotence; he was mean enough to employ them for his own purposes and passions, while outwardly desirous to attach himself to it; 2 he was even

1 Cf. Bell. Jud. i. 26, 2, and further the complaints of the Judean embassy before Augustus after Herod's death, Ant. xvii. 11, 2, and also in Jerusalem, ibid. 9, 4; it is clear, moreover, from these passages that there was very great arbitrariness exercised in the collection of the heavy

taxes.

2 In this respect another powerful Idumean, and older contemporary of Herod, Costobar, was somewhat more honourable. He was descended, according to Josephus. Ant. xv. 7, 9 sq.; xvi. 7, 6; Bell. Jud. i. 24, 6 (cf. also Ant. xviii. 5, 4), from an ancient Idumean priestly family, which served the god Coze

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(on this deity see Tuch, über die Sinaiinschriften, p. 73, and the new Nabatean inscriptions; the Nabatean god p, in the inscription in the Rev. Archéol. 1864, p. 286, is unquestionably the same). He fought valiantly under Herod, and was appointed by him governor of Idumea and Gaza, and was soon married to his sister Salômê, after she had lost her first husband Joseph; but he always entertained a secret aversion to the Herodeans, and to the whole Judean system; and would gladly, through the instrumentality of Cleopatra, and subsequently of Alexandra, have set himself and all the Idumeans once more free from Judeanism. The