A Harsh Law and Two Marriages

King Herod was very zealous in the administration of his whole government and wanted to put a stop to the particular acts of injustice committed by criminals in the city and the countryside. So he made a law, quite unlike our original laws, which he enacted on his own authority: that housebreakers should be sold and sent out of his kingdom. This punishment was not only hard for the offenders to bear but also involved the overthrow of the customs of our forefathers. For slavery to foreigners, to men who did not live in the Jewish way, and the necessity of doing whatever such men commanded, was a sin against our religion rather than a punishment of those found guilty; and our original laws avoid such a punishment. Those laws order that the thief restore fourfold, and that if he does not have that much, he is indeed to be sold, but not to foreigners, and not into perpetual slavery, for he must be set free after six years. This law, then, enacted to bring in a severe and illegal punishment, seemed a piece of insolence on Herod’s part. He was acting not as a king but as a tyrant, venturing to introduce such a punishment with contempt and with no regard for his subjects. And this penalty, once put into practice, was like Herod’s other actions: it became part of the charges against him and a cause of the hatred he lay under. [a]

It was at this time that he sailed to Italy, very eager to meet Caesar and to see his sons who were living in Rome. Caesar was very obliging to him in other respects, and he also gave him back his sons to take home with him, since they had already completed their education. As soon as the young men had come home from Italy, the people were very eager to see them, and they stood out among everyone, endowed with great blessings of fortune and with the bearing of royalty. So they soon became objects of envy to Salome, the king’s sister, and to those who had spread slanders against Mariamne. These people suspected that when the young men came to power, they themselves would be punished for the wickedness they had committed against their mother; so they made this very fear a reason to spread slanders against the sons as well. They gave out that the young men were not pleased to be in their father’s company, because he had put their mother to death, as though piety did not allow them to be seen associating with their mother’s murderer. By carrying these stories, which did have a basis in fact but rested only on probabilities as far as the present charge was concerned, they were able to do the young men harm and to make Herod withdraw the kindness he had formerly shown his sons. They did not say these things to him openly, but scattered such words among the people; and when these words were carried to Herod, a hatred of his sons was gradually built up in him that even natural affection could not overcome in the course of time. Yet at that time the king was still able to put a father’s natural affection ahead of all the suspicions and slanders his sons lay under. So he treated them with proper respect and, now that they were of a suitable age, married them to wives. To Aristobulus he gave Berenice, Salome’s daughter, as his wife; and to Alexander, Glaphyra, the daughter of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia. [d]