Eurycles and the Fall of Sylleus

The troubles in Herod’s family and among his children grew much worse at about this time. It now appeared certain, though it had not been unforeseen before, that fortune was threatening his kingdom with the greatest and most unbearable misfortunes. Their progress and growth at this time came about in the following way. A certain Eurycles, a Spartan, came to Herod on his travels. He was a man of note in his own country, but of a perverse mind, and so cunning in his pleasures and his flattery that he could indulge both and yet seem to indulge neither. He made Herod presents, but in such a way that he received more presents from him in return. He also chose such well-timed moments to work his way into the king’s friendship that he became one of his most intimate friends. He lodged in Antipater’s house; but he also had access to Alexander and talked with him freely, claiming to be in great favor with Archelaus, the king of Cappadocia. On that account he professed great respect for Glaphyra, and he secretly cultivated a friendship with all of them, while always watching what was said and done, so that he might have slanders ready to please each of them. In short, he so behaved toward everyone he talked with that he seemed to be that person’s particular friend, and he made others believe that wherever he was, it was for their advantage. [a]

So he won over Alexander, who was still young, and persuaded him that he could open his grievances to him with confidence, and to nobody else. So Alexander told him of his grief: how his father had turned against him. He told him also about his mother, and about Antipater: that Antipater had driven them from their proper rank and had power over everything himself; that none of this was bearable, since his father had already come to hate them; and he added that his father would neither admit them to his table nor speak with them. Such were Alexander’s complaints, natural enough, about the things that troubled him. Eurycles carried these conversations to Antipater. He told him that he was not informing him on his own account, but that, overcome by Antipater’s kindness, he was obliged to do it by the great importance of the matter. He warned him to beware of Alexander, for what he said was spoken with violent feeling, and to judge by what he said, he would certainly kill him with his own hand. At this Antipater, taking him for a friend because of this advice, gave him presents on every occasion, and at last persuaded him to tell Herod what he had heard.

So Eurycles described to the king Alexander’s ill will, as shown by the words he had heard him speak, and he was easily believed. By his words he turned the king around and provoked him, until he had increased his hatred of Alexander and made it implacable. Herod showed this at that very time, for he immediately gave Eurycles a present of fifty talents. When Eurycles had them, he went to Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, praised Alexander before him, and told him that he had been of great service to him in many ways by reconciling him with his father. So he got money from him too, and went away before his wicked practices were found out. But when Eurycles had returned to Sparta, he did not stop doing harm; and so, for his many acts of injustice, he was banished from his own country.

But the king of the Jews was no longer in the frame of mind he had been in before toward Alexander and Aristobulus, when he had been content to hear slanders against them when others told him of them. He had now come to the point of hating them himself, and of urging men to speak against them even when they would not do it of their own accord. He watched everything that was said, asked questions, and listened to anyone who would speak, if only they could say something against them. At last he heard that Euaratus of Cos was conspiring with Alexander, and to Herod this was the most welcome and sweetest news imaginable.

But a still greater misfortune came upon the young men. The slanders against them kept increasing, and one would think, so to speak, that everyone was striving to lay some grievous charge against them that might appear to serve the king’s safety. Two of Herod’s bodyguards, Jucundus and Tyrannus, were greatly esteemed for their strength and height. Herod had dismissed these men because he was displeased with them. They now used to ride with Alexander, were highly regarded by him for their skill in their exercises, and had been given some gold and other gifts. The king, at once suspicious of these men, had them tortured. They held out bravely under the torture for a long time, but at last confessed that Alexander had tried to persuade them to kill Herod while he was hunting wild beasts, so that it might be said he had fallen from his horse and been run through by his own spear, since he had once had such an accident before. They also showed the gold buried in the stable; and they convicted the king’s chief huntsman of having given them royal hunting spears, and weapons to Alexander’s attendants, at Alexander’s command.

After these, the commander of the garrison at Alexandrium was arrested and tortured, for he was accused of having promised to receive the young men into his fortress and to supply them with the king’s money that was stored there. He himself admitted nothing; but his son came forward and said it was so, and handed over a letter that, as far as could be judged, was in Alexander’s handwriting. Its contents were these: “When by God’s help we have accomplished all that we have set out to do, we will come to you. But do your part, as you have promised, to receive us into your fortress.” After this letter was produced, Herod had no doubt about his sons’ treacherous designs against him. But Alexander said that Diophantus the scribe had imitated his handwriting, and that the paper had been maliciously drawn up by Antipater. Diophantus did appear to be very skilled in such practices, and since he was afterward convicted of forging other papers, he was put to death for it. [c]

So the king brought those who had been tortured before the crowd at Jericho, to have them accuse the young men. Many of the people stoned these accusers to death; and when they were about to kill Alexander and Aristobulus too, the king would not allow it, but held back the crowd by means of Ptolemy and Pheroras. However, the young men were put under guard and kept in custody, so that nobody could get to them. Everything they did or said was watched, and the disgrace and fear they lived in differed little or not at all from that of condemned criminals. One of them, Aristobulus, was so deeply affected that he tried to bring Salome, who was both his aunt and his mother-in-law, to lament his misfortunes with him and to hate the man who was believing such things. He said to her, “Are you not in danger of destruction too, while the report goes around that you disclosed all our affairs beforehand to Sylleus, when you were hoping to marry him?” But she immediately carried these words to her brother. At this Herod lost patience and ordered Aristobulus to be bound. He ordered the two to be separated from each other and to write down the wrongs they had done against their father and bring the writings to him. When this was ordered, they wrote that they had laid no treacherous plots and made no preparations against their father, but that they had intended to flee, and that out of necessity, since their life had become one of suspicion and hardship. [d]

About this time an ambassador named Melas came from Archelaus in Cappadocia; he was one of the principal officials under him. Herod, wanting to show Archelaus’s ill will toward him, called for Alexander, in chains as he was, and questioned him again about the flight: where and how they had decided to escape. Alexander replied that they meant to go to Archelaus, who had promised to send them on to Rome; but that they had no wicked or harmful designs against their father, and that nothing of the kind their adversaries had charged them with was true. He wished that Tyrannus and Jucundus could have been examined more strictly; but they had been killed suddenly through Antipater, who had planted his own friends among the crowd.

When he had said this, Herod ordered that both Alexander and Melas be taken to Glaphyra, Archelaus’s daughter, and that she be asked whether she knew anything of Alexander’s treacherous designs against Herod. As soon as they came to her and she saw Alexander in chains, she beat her head and, in great dismay, let out a deep and moving groan. The young man also burst into tears. It was so pitiful a sight to those present that for a long while they could neither say nor do anything. But at last Ptolemy, who had been ordered to bring Alexander, told him to say whether his wife knew of his actions. He replied, “How could she, whom I love more than my own life, and by whom I have had children, not know what I do?” At this she cried out that she knew of no wicked designs of his; but that if accusing herself falsely would help to save him, she would confess it all. Alexander replied, “There is no such wickedness as those people suspect, who ought least of all to suspect it, either that I have devised or that you know of; only this, that we had decided to escape to Archelaus, and from there to Rome.” And she too confessed this. [f]

At this Herod, supposing that Archelaus’s ill will toward him was fully proved, sent a letter by Olympus and Volumnius. He told them to put in at Eleusa in Cilicia as they sailed past and give Archelaus the letter; and when they had protested to him that he had had a hand in his sons’ plot against him, they were to sail on from there to Rome. If they found that Nicolaus had gained ground and that Caesar was no longer displeased with Herod, they were to give Caesar his letters and the proofs he had ready to show against the young men. As for Archelaus, he defended himself in this way: he had promised to receive the young men because it was to their own and their father’s advantage, so that no overly severe course would be taken in the anger and turmoil they were in over the present suspicions; but he had not promised to send them to Caesar, and he had not promised the young men anything else that could show ill will toward Herod.

When these envoys reached Rome, they had a good opportunity to deliver their letters to Caesar, because they found him reconciled to Herod. The course of Nicolaus’s embassy had been as follows. As soon as he arrived in Rome and was at court, he did not set about only what he had come for, but also decided to accuse Sylleus. Even before he spoke with them, the Arabians were quarreling among themselves. Some of them left Sylleus’s party, joined Nicolaus, and told him all the wicked things that had been done. They produced clear proofs that Sylleus had slaughtered a great number of Obodas’s friends, for when these men left Sylleus they had carried off with them letters by which they could convict him. When Nicolaus saw this opportunity offered to him, he used it to gain his own point afterward, and at once set about reconciling Caesar and Herod. He was fully convinced that if he asked to make a defense of Herod directly, he would not be allowed to; but that if he asked to accuse Sylleus, an occasion would present itself to speak on Herod’s behalf. [g]

So when the case was ready for hearing and the day was set, Nicolaus, in the presence of Aretas’s ambassadors, accused Sylleus. He laid at his door the death of the king and of many other Arabians, and charged that he had borrowed money for no good purpose; and he proved that he had committed adultery, not only with Arabian women but with Roman women too. He added the greatest charge of all: that Sylleus had deceived Caesar, telling him nothing true about what Herod had done. When Nicolaus came to this topic, Caesar stopped him from going on and asked him to speak only to this matter of Herod: to show that he had not led an army into Arabia, nor killed two thousand five hundred men there, nor taken prisoners, nor plundered the country. Nicolaus gave this answer: “I will show, above all, that of the charges you have been told of, either nothing at all is true or very little; for if they had been true, you might rightly have been still angrier with Herod.” At this strange claim Caesar listened very closely. Nicolaus said that there was a debt of five hundred talents owed to Herod, and a bond in which it was written that if the appointed time lapsed, he might lawfully make a seizure from any part of Sylleus’s country. “As for the so-called army,” he said, “it was no army, but a detachment sent out to demand just payment of the money. Nor was it sent at once, nor as soon as the bond allowed. Herod went again and again before Saturninus and Volumnius, the governors of Syria, and at last at Berytus, in their presence, Sylleus swore by your fortune that he would certainly pay the money within thirty days and hand over those who had fled from Herod’s realm. When Sylleus had done none of this, Herod came before the governors again; and when they gave him permission to make a seizure for his money, he went out of his country, and that reluctantly, with a detachment of soldiers for that purpose. This is the whole war these men describe so tragically; this is the business of the expedition into Arabia. How can it be called a war, when your governors permitted it, the agreement allowed it, and it was not carried out until your name, Caesar, as well as those of the other gods, had been profaned?

“Now I must speak in order about the captives. There were robbers living in Trachonitis. At first they numbered no more than forty, but afterward they became more, and they escaped the punishment Herod would have inflicted on them by making Arabia their refuge. Sylleus took them in and supplied them with food, so that they might do harm to all mankind; he gave them land to live on, and himself took the profits of their robberies. Yet he promised to hand these men over, with the same oaths and by the same date that he swore to and fixed for paying his debt. Nor can he show by any means that anyone else has been taken out of Arabia at this time besides these, and indeed not even all of these, but only as many as could not hide themselves. So the hateful slander about the captives has been exposed. Now learn, Caesar, the greatest fiction and lie of all, invented to provoke your anger. For I venture to affirm that when the Arabian forces came against us, and one or two of Herod’s men had fallen, only then did he defend himself; and there fell Naceb their general, and about twenty-five others in all, and no more. Sylleus has multiplied every single soldier by a hundred, and so he reckons the dead at two thousand five hundred.”

This provoked Caesar more than ever. He turned to Sylleus full of rage and asked him how many of the Arabians had been killed. Sylleus hesitated and said he had been misinformed. Then the agreements about the money he had borrowed were read, along with the letters of the governors of Syria and the complaints of the various cities that had been injured by the robbers. The upshot was that Sylleus was condemned to die, and Caesar was reconciled to Herod. He admitted his regret for the harsh things he had written to him because of slander, so far that he told Sylleus that by his lying account of things he had forced him to be ungrateful to a man who was his friend. In the end it all came to this: Sylleus was sent off to answer Herod’s suit and to repay the debt he owed, and after that to be punished. But Caesar was still offended with Aretas for having taken the government on himself without first obtaining his consent, for he had decided to give Arabia to Herod. The letters Herod had sent prevented him from doing so. For Olympus and Volumnius, seeing that Caesar had now become favorable to Herod, thought it right to deliver to him at once the letters Herod had ordered them to give him about his sons. When Caesar had read them, he thought it would not be proper to add another government to Herod’s now that he was old and on bad terms with his sons. So he admitted Aretas’s ambassadors; and after merely rebuking Aretas for his rashness in not waiting to receive the kingdom from him, he accepted his presents and confirmed him in his rule. [o]