LITMIR.BIZ

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of his power; the untoward fortune that he had feared had not only been averted, but had actually assisted in exalting him. He was not, however, to enjoy his good fortune; the terrible consequences of his crimes clung to his footsteps and changed his cup of happiness into one of gall. In the narrow circle of his own home a tragedy was about to be enacted, far more terrible than could have been conceived by the imagination of a poet. Mariamne, who, as well as her mother Alexandra, had been in close confinement during the king's absence, had elicited from her gaoler Soem the fact that she would not have been permitted to outlive Herod. Upon the king's return she made no secret of her hatred for him, and when he spoke to her in words of tenderness and affection, she taunted him with the murders of her brother, her grandfather and many others of her relatives. Herod's heart was torn by the love he bore to this beautiful woman and by the wrath he felt at her persistent enmity to his person and his power. Whilst still a prey to these conflicting feelings he was only too ready to lend a willing ear to the malicious inventions of his sister Salome, who assured him that his cup-bearer had been bribed by Mariamne to poison him. During the investigation that ensued it transpired that Soem had disclosed his secret instructions to the queen, and this treachery on the part of a confidential servant let loose a host of wild passions within Herod's breast. Soem was decapitated on the spot. Whilst still moved by his ungovernable rage, Herod summoned a council, before whom he accused his wife of adultery and of an attempt to poison him. The judges passed the sentence of death upon her, and, wishing to curry favor with Herod, ordered the execution to take place forthwith. It was thus that the most beautiful woman in Judæa, the Hasmonæan princess, the pride of her people, was led to the scaffold. She went to her doom with remarkable fortitude, without the faintest tremor or the least display of feminine weakness, worthy of her heroic ancestry (29). We may take Mariamne as the symbol of Judæa, delivered up to the axe of the executioner by intrigue and passion.

      But Mariamne's death did not quench Herod's thirst for revenge; on the contrary, it brought on still fiercer paroxysms of rage. He could not endure her loss, and became a prey to sickness and insanity. He would call frantically upon her name in a passion of sobs and tears; and he had her body embalmed in honey, so that he might keep it in his presence. It was whilst traveling in Samaria that he fell so dangerously ill that the doctors despaired of his life, and when this intelligence reached his capital, Alexandra proceeded to possess herself of Jerusalem. But the king's vitality returned upon the rumor of this sudden peril to his throne, and Alexandra fell a victim to her sedition. She was the very last who bore the Hasmonæan name, and she had lived long enough to witness the violent and disgraceful deaths of her father-in-law Aristobulus II, her husband Alexander, her brother-in-law Antigonus, her son Aristobulus III, her father Hyrcanus II, and her daughter Mariamne.

      The remaining two-thirds of the Herodian reign are devoid of any real progress; the record of that time tells of cringing submission to Augustus and to Rome, of the erection of magnificent edifices, of the love of pomp and display, of deeply-rooted moral corruption, of unsuccessful conspiracies and court intrigues, leading to new crimes and further executions. In order to retain the favor of the all-powerful Augustus, Herod introduced into Jerusalem the celebration of the Actian games, occurring every fifth year, in remembrance of Augustus' victory over his rival, he also built theaters and arenas, where he organized combats between gladiators or wild beasts, thus arousing the displeasure of the national party, who rightly divined that it was intended that Judaism soon should be absorbed by a Pagan-Roman worship, and who recognized in the Roman trophies and eagles displayed in the theaters, the introduction of Roman deities. Herod gave his people another cause for umbrage, in the fact that he was not only ornamenting the hated city of Samaria, within a circumference of half a mile, with the most beautiful buildings, but that he also contemplated making that city the capital of his dominions, a dignity for which she was singularly adapted by her fortunate position. The newly-built Samaria was renamed Sebaste, just as the citadel Baris, the armory of the Hasmonæans in old days, on the northwest side of the Temple, had been called Antonia in honor of Antony. In fact, Judæa became crowded with cities and with monuments which bore the names of Herod's own family or those of his Roman protectors. The fortress of Straton on the sea was, by most lavish expenditure, converted into a beautiful city, with an extensive harbor, and received the name of Cæsarea, one of the towers on its walls being called Drusus, after the son of Augustus. Herod did not even hesitate to erect a Roman temple on the soil of the Holy Land. Two colossal figures were raised in Cæsarea, one of them representing, in gigantic proportions, the figure of Augustus as the Olympian Jupiter, and the other that of the city of Rome as the Argive Juno. At the splendid consecration of Cæsarea, the rebuilding of which had occupied twelve years, the inhabitants could have imagined themselves transported into a pagan city. On account of its name, its origin and its importance, the national party justly called it Little Rome. In later days it became the seat of the Roman governor, the rival of Jerusalem, and finally her conqueror. Whenever Cæsarea rejoiced, Jerusalem was sure to mourn. The harbor of Cæsarea, which grew in time to be a town itself, was called Sebastus. Herod had, without doubt, enhanced the beauty of Judæa, but, like a doomed victim, she was garlanded for the altar. His love of display found satisfaction in the magnificence of his edifices, but not his love of renown. Despairing of securing the affection of his own people, he resolved to compel the admiration of the stranger. He exhausted his people by taxation, redoubled his extortions, searched for hidden treasures in the ancient royal cemeteries, sold those who had been imprisoned for theft as slaves to neighboring countries, and then lavished all the funds he had gained by these practices upon the adornment of Syrian, Asiatic, and Greek cities. Huge were the sums of money that he withdrew from his own country for such enterprises.

      Herod may possibly have secured the admiration and affection of the Greeks, the Romans and the Judæans outside of Palestine; but the people of Jerusalem felt nothing but aversion for this grasping upstart, who sought to estrange them from the customs of their fathers. In spite of his having shown himself to be their generous benefactor, upon the occasion of a great famine (24), the nation now only beheld in him the murderer of the Hasmonæans, the usurper of their throne, the destroyer of the noblest citizens, the suppressor of freedom. He had disgraced the three dignities of Monarch, High Priest, and Synhedrist. The first he had arrogated to himself; the second, which until his reign had, with very few exceptions, descended by right of inheritance from father to son, he had given away, according to his own pleasure or to attain his own ends; and the power of the third he had curtailed by allowing it hardly any scope for action. Joshua, of the family of Phabi, had, through Herod's instrumentality, succeeded Ananel as High Priest; but the king having been fascinated by the beauty of another Mariamne, the daughter of an inferior priest, Simon, he dispossessed Joshua of his dignity, and raised Simon to his office, in order that his future wife's rank be not too strikingly below his own.

      This High Priest Simon was an Alexandrian, the son of Boëthus, and it was he who laid the foundation-stone of the greatness of the house of Boëthus, from which several high priests descended. He appears to have been the founder of the sect of the Boëthuseans, who followed the teachings of the Sadducees, but who were better able to grasp and apply those teachings than the Sadducees themselves, thanks to their Alexandrian readiness and sophistry.

      These despotic acts of Herod were not calculated to make him beloved by his people. He was perfectly aware of their ill-will towards him, but as he could not crush it, he at least sought to make it harmless. Thus he insisted upon all subjects taking an oath of allegiance, resolving to punish severely those who would refrain from doing so. The Essenes alone, who disapproved of oaths, were exempt; he had no cause for fear in their peaceful, contemplative lives; on the contrary, he warmly approved of such subjects, who would submit without murmuring to any law that he might choose to make. Those amongst the Pharisees who were the followers of the peace-loving Hillel seem to have taken the required oath without hesitation, but the followers of the sterner Shammai stubbornly refused to do so. Six thousand Pharisees in all refused to take the oath of allegiance, and to inflict corporal punishment upon so great a number appeared, even to Herod, a serious matter. So he heavily taxed the refractory, amongst whom was the wife of his brother Pheroras, an ardent devotee, strange to say, of strict Phariseeism.

      But, in spite of all these precautionary measures, Herod did not trust his subjects, and employed a number of spies to watch them. He himself would often appear in disguise at their popular assemblies, and woe to the unfortunate individual who, at that moment,

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