Jerusalem. The Biography

Aristobulos’ Herodian wife, thus insulting her mother, their dangerous aunt Salome. They boasted that when they were kings they would put Herod’s wives to labour with the slaves and use Herod’s other sons as clerks.
    Salome reported all this to Herod, who was infuriated by the ingratitude and alarmed by the betrayal of these spoilt princelings. He had long ignored Antipater, his eldest son, by his first wife Doris. But now in 13 BC , Herod recalled Antipater and asked Agrippa to take him to Romewith a sealed document for the emperor: it was his will, disinheriting the two boys and instead bequeathing the kingdom to Antipater. But his new heir, probably in his mid-twenties, was embittered by paternal neglect and fraternal envy. He and his mother conspired to destroy the disinherited princes, whom they accused of treason.
    Herod asked Augustus, staying at Aquileia on the Adriatic, to judge the three princes. Augustus reconciled father and sons, with the result that Herod sailed home, called a meeting in the court of the Temple and announced that his three sons would share the kingdom. Doris, Antipater and Salome set about reversing this reconciliation for their own purposes, but they were helped by the arrogance of the boys: Prince Alexander told everyone that Herod dyed his hair to look younger and confided that he deliberately missed his targets out hunting to make his father feel better. He also seduced three of the king’s own eunuchs, giving him access to his father’s secrets. Herod arrested and tortured Alexander’s servants until one confessed that his master planned to assassinate him out hunting. Alexander’s father-in-law, the King of Cappadocia, who was visiting his daughter, managed to reconcile father and sons again. Herod expressed his gratitude by presenting the Cappadocian with a very Herodian gift: a courtesan who gloried in the name Pannychis – All-Night-Long.
    The peace did not last long: the torture of servants now revealed a letter from Alexander to the commander of the Alexandrium Fortress that said: ‘When we have achieved all we set out to do, we’ll come to you.’ Herod dreamed that Alexander was raising a dagger over him, a nightmare so vivid that he arrested both boys, who admitted they were planning to escape. Herod had to consult Augustus, by now tiring of his old friend’s excesses – though the emperor himself was no stranger to naughty children and tangled successions. Augustus ruled that, if the boys had plotted against Herod, he had every right to punish them.
    Herod held the trial in Berytus (Beirut), outside his formal jurisdiction – and therefore supposedly a fair place for the trial. The boys were sentenced to death as Herod wished, which was hardly surprising since he had generously embellished the city. Herod’s counsellors advised mercy – but when one hinted that the boys were suborning the army, Herod liquidated 300 officers. The princes were taken back to Judaea and garrotted. The tragedy of their mother Mariamme, the curse of the Maccabees, had come full circle. Augustus was not amused. Knowing that Jews eschewed pork, he commented drily: ‘I’d rather be Herod’s pig than his son.’ But this was just the beginning of the Grand Guignol decay of Herod the Great.
    HEROD: THE LIVING PUTREFACTION
     
    The king, now in his sixties, was ailing and paranoid. Antipater was the sole named heir, but there were many other sons available to inherit the kingdom, and Herod’s sister Salome started to plot against him; she found a servant who claimed that Antipater was planning to poison Herod with a mysterious drug. Antipater, who was in Rome meeting with Augustus, rushed home and galloped to the palace in Jerusalem, but he was arrested there before he could reach his father. At his trial, the suspect drug was given to a convict who dropped down dead. More torture revealed that a Jewish slave belonging to the Empress Livia, Augustus’ own wife and herself an expert on poisons, had forged letters to frame Salome.
    Herod sent the evidence to Augustus and drew up his third will, leaving the kingdom to another of his sons, Antipas, the Herod who would later encounter John the Baptist and Jesus. Herod’s illness distorted his judgement and weakened his grip on the Jewish opposition. He placed a gilded bronze eagle on the great gate of the Temple. Some students climbed on to the roof, abseiled down in front of the crowded courtyard and cut it down. The troops of the