Alexander in Chains

Still, the affairs of Herod’s family were no better, but constantly more troublesome. Now an incident occurred that arose from no decent cause, yet went so far as to bring great difficulties on him. The king had certain eunuchs of whom he was very fond on account of their beauty. One of them was entrusted with bringing him his drink, another with bringing him his supper, and the third with putting him to bed, and this one also managed the principal affairs of the government. Someone told the king that these eunuchs had been corrupted by Alexander, the king’s son, with large sums of money. When they were asked whether Alexander had had sexual relations with them, they confessed it, but said they knew of no further harm he intended against his father. But when they were tortured more severely and were in the utmost extremity, and the torturers, to please Antipater, stretched the rack to the very limit, they said that Alexander bore great ill will and an inborn hatred toward his father. He had urged them, they said, to give Herod up as a man who had already lived too long, who covered his great age by dyeing his hair black and tried to conceal whatever would betray how old he was; and if they would attach themselves to him, then when he came to the kingdom, which in spite of his father could go to no one else, they would quickly have the first place in it. For Alexander was now ready to take the kingdom, not only by right of birth but by the preparations he had made for gaining it, because a great many of the officers and a great many of his friends were on his side, and those no bad men either, ready both to do and to suffer whatever might come of it. [a]

When Herod heard this confession he was all anger and fear. Some parts of it seemed to him insulting, and others made him suspect dangers hanging over him, so that he was provoked on both counts and bitterly afraid that some heavier plot had been laid against him than he could then escape. So he did not now make an open search, but sent spies around to watch those he suspected, for he was now overrun with suspicion and hatred of everyone around him. Indulging a great many suspicions for the sake of his own safety, he went on suspecting even the guiltless, and he set no limits on himself. Supposing that those who stayed with him had the most power to harm him, he found them very frightening; and as for those who did not usually come to him, it seemed enough to name them, and he thought himself safer once they were destroyed. At last those of his household had come to such a pass that, having no security of escaping themselves, they fell to accusing one another, imagining that whoever accused another first was most likely to save himself. Yet when any had brought others down, they were hated, and those who had unjustly accused others were thought to suffer justly, having only forestalled their own accusation by it. They even carried out their private feuds by this means, and when they were caught they were punished in the same way. So these men contrived to use this opportunity as a weapon and a snare against their enemies, yet when they tried it, they were caught themselves in the same snare they had laid for others. The king soon regretted what he had done, because he had no clear evidence of the guilt of those he had killed; and what was still harsher in him, he did not use his regret to stop doing the same thing again, but to inflict the same punishment on their accusers.

Such was the disorder of affairs in the palace. He had already told many of his friends outright that they were not to appear before him or come into the palace, and he gave this order against those whose freedom of speech with him showed more boldness than deference. For it was at this time that he expelled Andromachus and Gemellus, men who had long been his friends and had been very useful to him in the affairs of his kingdom and of advantage to his family through their embassies and counsels. They had been tutors to his sons and had in a way the first rank of freedom with him. He expelled Andromachus because his son Demetrius was a companion of Alexander, and Gemellus because he knew that Gemellus wished Alexander well, which came from his having been with him in his youth, when he was at school and away at Rome. These men he expelled from his palace, and he was quite willing to have done worse to them; but so as not to seem to take such liberties with men of so great reputation, he contented himself with depriving them of their rank and of their power to hinder his wicked proceedings. [c]

It was Antipater who was the cause of all this. When he saw how mad and unrestrained his father’s way of acting was, having long been one of his counselors, he urged him on, thinking he could bring him to some real purpose once everyone who could oppose him was taken away. So when Andromachus and his friends had been driven away and had no further conversation or freedom with the king, the king first examined under torture all whom he thought loyal to Alexander, to learn whether they knew of any of his attempts against him. But these died without having anything to say on that matter, which made the king the more zealous, since he could not find out the evil proceedings he suspected them of. Antipater was very clever at raising slanders against those who were really innocent, as if their denial were only their steadfast loyalty, and so he provoked Herod to discover, by torturing great numbers, what plots were still hidden. Among the many who were tortured there was a certain man who said he knew that the young man had often said that when he was praised for being tall and a skillful archer, and for surpassing all men in his other admirable exercises, these qualities given him by nature, though good in themselves, were no advantage to him, because his father was grieved at them and envied him for them. When he walked with his father, he said, he tried to stoop and make himself shorter so as not to seem too tall; and when he shot at anything while hunting in his father’s presence, he missed his mark on purpose, because he knew how ambitious his father was to be superior in such exercises. When the man was tortured about this saying and his body was given some relief afterward, he added that Alexander had his brother Aristobulus to help him, and had planned to lie in wait for their father as they were hunting and kill him, and when they had done so, to flee to Rome and ask to have the kingdom given them. Letters of the young man to his brother were also found, in which he complained that his father did not act justly in giving Antipater a territory whose revenues came to two hundred talents. On these confessions Herod at once thought he had something to rely on, in his own judgment, for his suspicion of his sons, and he arrested Alexander and put him in chains. Yet he still remained uneasy and was not fully convinced of the truth of what he had heard. When he came to think it over, he found that they had only made youthful complaints and quarrels, and that it was incredible that his son, after killing him, would openly go to Rome. So he wanted some surer proof of his son’s wickedness, and was very anxious to get it, so as not to seem to have had him imprisoned too rashly. He tortured the leading friends of Alexander and put not a few of them to death, without getting any of the things he suspected out of them. While Herod was very busy with this matter, and the palace was full of terror and trouble, one of the younger men, in his utmost agony, confessed that Alexander had sent to his friends at Rome asking that he be quickly summoned there by Caesar, saying that he could disclose a plot against Caesar: that Mithridates, king of Parthia, had joined in friendship with his father against the Romans, and that he had a poison ready prepared at Ashkelon. [e]

Herod believed these accusations, and in his miserable state found in them some sort of comfort as an excuse for his rashness, flattering himself that things were found to be in so bad a condition. But the poison, which he worked hard to find, he could not find. As for Alexander, he was very eager to make the vast misfortunes he was under even worse. So he did not turn to denial, but punished his father’s rashness with a greater crime of his own; and perhaps he wanted to make his father ashamed of believing such slanders so easily. Above all he aimed, if he could get his story believed, to torment his father and his whole kingdom. For he wrote four letters and sent them to him, saying that he need not torture anyone more, for he had indeed plotted against him; that he had as his partners Pheroras and the most trusted of the king’s friends; that Salome had come in to him by night and slept with him against his will; and that all were of one mind to do away with Herod as soon as they could, and so be rid of the constant fear they lived in because of him. Among those accused were Ptolemy and Sapinnius, the king’s most loyal friends. What more can be said, except that those who had before been the most intimate friends had become wild beasts to one another, as though some madness had fallen on them? There was no room for defense or refutation by which the truth might be discovered, but all were condemned at random to destruction. Some lamented those in prison, some those who had been put to death, and others lamented that they were expecting the same miseries themselves; and silence and gloom stripped the palace of the happiness it had once known. Herod’s own life also was wholly disordered. Because he could trust no one, he was cruelly punished by the expectation of further misery; for he often imagined that his son had fallen on him or stood over him with a sword in his hand. So his mind was fixed on this night and day, turning it over and over, just as if he were out of his mind. Such was the sad condition Herod was now in. [g]

When Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, heard of the state Herod was in, he was in great distress about his daughter and the young man, her husband, and he grieved with Herod as with a friend in so great a disturbance; so he came in person to settle their differences. Finding Herod in such a temper, he thought it entirely unwise to reprove him or to claim that he had done anything rashly, since he would naturally draw him into arguing the point and, as Herod defended himself more and more, make him the more irritated. So he went to work another way to correct the misfortunes that had happened. He appeared angry at the young man and said that Herod had been very considerate, since he had done nothing rashly at all. He also said he would dissolve his daughter’s marriage to Alexander, and could not in justice spare even his own daughter if she knew of anything and had not told Herod. When Archelaus showed himself of this temper, otherwise than Herod had expected or imagined, and for the most part took Herod’s side and was angry on his account, the king softened his harshness. Taking occasion from the appearance that he had acted justly up to then, he came by degrees to take on the feelings of a father, and was to be pitied on both sides. For when some people refuted the slanders laid on the young man, he was thrown into a rage; but when Archelaus joined in the accusation, he dissolved in tears and grief, like a loving father. So he asked Archelaus not to dissolve his son’s marriage, and was no longer so angry as before at his offenses. When Archelaus found him in a more considerate frame of mind, he shifted the slanders onto Alexander’s friends, and said it must be owing to them that so young a man, and one unacquainted with malice, had been corrupted; and he suggested that there was more reason to suspect the brother than the son. At this Herod became very displeased with Pheroras, who now had no one who could reconcile him with his brother. So when Pheroras saw that Archelaus had the greatest influence with Herod, he went to him in mourning clothes, like one who bore every sign of a ruined man. Archelaus did not ignore his plea, yet he did not undertake to change the king’s attitude toward him at once. He said it was better for Pheroras to go himself to the king and confess himself the cause of everything; that this would keep the king’s anger from going to extremes against him; and that he himself would then be present to help him. When he had persuaded him to this, he gained his point with both of them, and the slanders raised against the young man were, beyond all expectation, wiped away. As soon as Archelaus had made the reconciliation, he went away to Cappadocia, having proved at this time the most welcome person in the world to Herod. For this reason Herod gave him the richest presents as tokens of his regard, and, being generous on other occasions too, counted him one of his dearest friends. He also agreed with him that he would go to Rome, since he had written to Caesar about these matters. So they went together as far as Antioch, and there Herod reconciled Archelaus with Titius, the governor of Syria, who had been greatly at odds with him, and so returned to Judea. [h]