Cleopatra in Judea

At this time the affairs of Syria were in confusion, because Cleopatra kept urging Antony to lay hands on everyone’s dominions. She persuaded him to take those dominions away from their various princes and give them to her, and she had great influence over him, since he was enslaved to her by his passion. She was also greedy by nature and stopped at no wickedness. She had already poisoned her brother, because she knew he was to be king of Egypt, and this when he was only fifteen years old; and she had her sister Arsinoe killed through Antony while she was a suppliant at the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. For if there was any hope of getting money, she would violate both temples and tombs. There was no holy place, however inviolable it was held to be, that she would not strip of the ornaments it had in it, and no place so profane that it would not suffer the most outrageous treatment at her hands, if only it could add something to the greed of this wicked creature. Yet all this was not enough for so extravagant a woman, a slave to her desires; she still imagined that she lacked everything she could think of, and did her utmost to get it. For this reason she drove Antony on continually to take away other people’s dominions and give them to her. As she traveled through Syria with him, she schemed to get it into her possession; so she had Lysanias the son of Ptolemy killed, accusing him of bringing the Parthians into those countries. She also asked Antony to give her Judea and Arabia, and to that end wanted him to take these countries away from their present rulers. As for Antony, he was so completely overcome by this woman that one would think it was not her company alone that did it, but that he was somehow bewitched into doing whatever she wanted. Yet the grossest of her injustices made him so ashamed that he would not always listen to her and commit the flagrant outrages she would have persuaded him to. So, in order not to refuse her altogether, nor to appear openly a bad man by doing everything she demanded, he took some parts of each of those countries from their former rulers and gave them to her. Thus he gave her the cities on this side of the river Eleutherus as far as Egypt, except Tyre and Sidon, which he knew had been free cities since the time of their ancestors, though she pressed him very often to give her those as well. [a]

When Cleopatra had gained this much, and had accompanied Antony on his expedition to Armenia as far as the Euphrates, she turned back and came to Apamea and Damascus, and passed on into Judea. There Herod met her and leased from her parts of Arabia and the revenues that came to her from the region around Jericho. This country produces balsam, the most precious drug there is, which grows there alone. The place also produces palm trees, many in number and excellent of their kind. While she was there, and very often in Herod’s company, she tried to have an affair with the king; nor did she trouble to keep her pursuit of such pleasures secret. Perhaps she did feel some passion for him; or rather, as is most probable, she was quietly preparing, as the beginning of a trap, an outrage against herself that she could lay at his door. In any case, on the whole she seemed overcome with love for him. Now Herod had long borne Cleopatra no goodwill, knowing that she was a woman hateful to everyone, and at that time he thought her especially deserving of his hatred, if this attempt came from lust. He had also thought of forestalling her intrigues by putting her to death, if that was what she was after. He refused her proposals, and called a council of his friends to consider with them whether he should not kill her, now that he had her in his power. By doing so, he said, he would free from a multitude of evils all those to whom she was already a burden and was expected to be so in the future; and this very thing would be much to Antony’s own advantage, since she would certainly not be faithful to him if any crisis or need should come upon him in which he needed her loyalty. But when he was minded to follow this plan, his friends would not let him. They told him, first, that it was not right to attempt so great a thing and so run into the utmost danger; and they pressed him hard and begged him to undertake nothing rashly, for Antony would never bear it, no, not even if someone laid it plainly before his eyes that it was for his own good; and the appearance of robbing him of her company by so violent and treacherous a method would probably set his passion more on fire than before. Nor did it appear that Herod could offer any defense of tolerable weight, since the attempt would be against a woman of the highest rank of any of her sex in the world at that time. And as for any advantage to be expected from such an undertaking, if any could be supposed in this case, it would look like presumption on Herod’s part and a condemnation of Antony’s own attachment to her. These considerations made it very plain that by doing it he would fill his government with great and lasting trouble, both for himself and for his descendants, whereas it was still in his power to reject the wickedness she was urging on him and to come off honorably at the same time. So by frightening Herod in this way, and showing him the danger he would in all probability run by this undertaking, they held him back from it. So he treated Cleopatra kindly, gave her presents, and escorted her on her way to Egypt. [e]

Antony, meanwhile, subdued Armenia, and sent Artavasdes the son of Tigranes in chains, with his children and his governors, to Egypt, and made a present of them, and of all the royal ornaments he had taken out of that kingdom, to Cleopatra. Artaxias, the eldest of his sons, who had escaped at that time, took the kingdom of Armenia. He was later driven out by Archelaus and Nero Caesar, when they restored his younger brother Tigranes to that kingdom; but that happened a good while afterward. [h]

As for the tribute Herod was to pay Cleopatra for the country Antony had given her, he dealt fairly with her, thinking it unsafe to give Cleopatra any cause to hate him. As for the king of Arabia, whose tribute Herod had undertaken to pay her, for some time he did pay Herod as much as two hundred talents; but afterward he became very stingy and slow in his payments, could hardly be brought to pay some parts of it, and was not willing to pay even those without some deductions. [i]