The Plot in the Theater

For this reason Herod departed still further from the customs of his country, and by bringing in foreign practices he gradually corrupted the ancient constitution, which ought to have been kept untouched. From this we suffered no small harm in later times as well, because the observances that had formerly led the people to piety were now neglected. In the first place, he established athletic contests to be held every fifth year in honor of Caesar. He built a theater in Jerusalem, and also a very large amphitheater in the plain. Both were splendid for their costliness, but foreign to Jewish custom, for the use of such buildings and the exhibition of such shows has not been handed down among us. Yet he celebrated this festival of the fifth year with the greatest splendor. He sent notice of it to the neighboring countries and called people together from the whole nation. Athletes and every other kind of competitor were invited from every land by the hope of the prizes offered and the glory of victory, and the foremost men in these pursuits gathered together. For he offered very great prizes not only to those who competed in the athletic contests, which are performed naked, but also to those who competed in music, who are called thymelici, and he spared no effort to bring all the most famous performers to the contest. He also offered no small rewards for four-horse chariots, two-horse chariots and riders on single horses. And whatever any nation had devised for costliness or grandeur, he imitated all of it, out of ambition to make his display famous. Inscriptions in honor of Caesar ran all around the theater, together with trophies of the nations he had conquered in his wars, all of them made for him of refined gold and silver. Nor was there anything of service to the show, whether costly garments or vessels set with precious stones, that was not put on display along with the contests. There was also a supply of wild beasts: a great many lions were gathered for him, and other animals of extraordinary strength or of a rarer kind. These were set to fight one another, or condemned men were made to fight them. To foreigners the expense was astonishing, and the dangers of the spectacle a delight. But to the native Jews it was an open overthrow of the customs they held in honor. It seemed plain impiety to throw men to wild beasts for the pleasure of those watching, and no less impiety to exchange their own customs for foreign practices. Above all, the trophies offended them. They thought they were images hidden inside the armor hung around them, and they were greatly upset, because it was not the custom of their country to honor such things. [a]

Herod was well aware how disturbed they were. He thought it unwise to use force against them, so he talked with some of them to calm them, trying to free them from their superstitious fear. But he could not persuade them. Out of their distress at the offenses they believed he had committed, they cried out with one voice that, even if they could bear everything else, they would never bear images of men in their city, meaning the trophies, because this was against the customs of their country. When Herod saw them so agitated, and that they would not easily change their minds unless they were given some reassurance, he called the most eminent of them, brought them into the theater, showed them the trophies, and asked them what they took these things to be. When they cried out that they were images of men, he ordered the ornaments around them to be removed and showed them the bare pieces of wood. Stripped of their ornaments, these at once became a great joke to them, all the more because they had already been ridiculing the ornaments as images.

When Herod had in this way gotten around the people and dispelled the angry impulse they had been under, most of them changed their attitude and were no longer displeased with him. But some of them persisted in their resentment of these unaccustomed practices. They believed that the overthrow of the customs of their country would be the beginning of great evils for them, and they thought it a duty of piety to risk their lives rather than seem to look on while Herod, after the change he had made in their government, brought in by force customs they had never been used to, and showed himself a king in name but in fact an enemy of the whole nation. So ten men who were citizens conspired together and swore to one another to face any danger. They hid daggers under their garments. Among the conspirators who had sworn together there was also a blind man, who had joined them out of indignation at what he had heard was being done. He was not able to give the others any help in the undertaking, but he was ready to share whatever suffering might befall them, so that he became a very great encouragement to the rest.

When they had made this decision, they went into the theater by agreement. They hoped, first, that Herod himself would not escape them when they fell on him so unexpectedly; and if they missed him, they expected at least to kill many of those around him. That would be enough for them, even if they died for it: it would bring the king himself to think about the outrages he seemed to be committing against the people. So these conspirators stood ready beforehand and went about their purpose with great eagerness. But one of Herod’s spies, men appointed to search out and report such plots, discovered the whole affair and informed the king of it as he was about to enter the theater. When he considered the hatred he knew most of the people bore him, and the disturbances that arose on every occasion, he thought the report not unlikely. So he withdrew into his palace and summoned those accused of the conspiracy by name. When the guards fell on them, they were caught in the act. Knowing they could not escape, they met their end with all the dignity they could, and did not abate their resolve in the least. They showed no shame for what they had attempted and did not deny it. When they were seized they displayed their daggers, and declared that the conspiracy they had sworn to was a good and pious act; that what they had intended was not for gain or out of personal passion, but chiefly for the common customs of their country, which all Jews were bound either to keep or to die for. This is what these men said, out of their undaunted courage in this conspiracy. Then the king’s guards who stood around them led them away, and they endured every torture until they died. Not long afterward some of the people, out of hatred, seized the spy who had informed on them. They not only killed him but tore him limb from limb and threw him to the dogs. Many of the citizens saw this done, yet not one of them would inform on those who did it, until Herod made a harsh and relentless search, and some women, under torture, confessed what they had seen. The men who had done it were so terribly punished by the king that their entire families were destroyed for their rashness. Yet the people’s stubbornness, and the unshaken constancy they showed in defense of their laws, did not let Herod rest easy unless he held them with every possible security. He resolved to hem the people in on every side, so that any innovations would not break out into open revolt.

He already had the city secured by the palace in which he lived, and the temple by the strong fortress beside it called Antonia, which he had built himself. Now he planned to make Samaria a third stronghold for himself against the whole people, and he called it Sebaste. He thought this place would be a stronghold against the country no less than the others. It lay a day’s journey from Jerusalem, and would be useful to him in keeping both the city and the country in awe. He also built another fortress for the whole nation, the place formerly called Strato’s Tower, which he named Caesarea. Moreover, in the great plain he allotted land to picked horsemen of his own guard, and founded with them a place toward Galilee called Gaba, and Heshbonitis in Perea. These were the places he built one by one, always devising something more for his security and surrounding the whole nation with garrisons, so that the people could by no means slip out of his control or fall into the riots they were constantly breaking into at the slightest disturbance; and so that if they did start any trouble, it would not go unnoticed, since some of his men would always be stationed nearby, able both to learn what they were attempting and to prevent it. When he set about walling Samaria, he arranged to bring there as fellow citizens many of those who had fought on his side in his wars, and many of the people of the neighborhood as well. He did this out of an ambition to raise up anew, through his own work, a city that had not before been among the notable ones; but chiefly because his ambition at the same time served his security. He changed its name, calling it Sebaste, and divided the surrounding land, which was the best in the country, among the settlers, so that they might live in prosperity from the moment they came together there. He surrounded the city with a strong wall, making use of the steepness of the site to strengthen its defenses. Nor did he keep it as small as it had been before; he took in a circuit such that it was in no way inferior to the most famous cities, for it was about two and a half miles around. Inside, near the middle, he laid out a sacred precinct about 900 feet across, adorned in every way, and in it he raised a temple that ranked among the most famous for size and beauty. He adorned every part of the city in every way as well. With an eye to the needs of security, he made it by the strength of its walls a fortress of the first rank; and he took care also for its beauty, out of his love of fine things and so as to leave monuments of his generosity to later ages. [f]