Herod’s Wives and Grandchildren

When Antipater had thus done away with his brothers, and had brought his father to the height of impiety, so that he was haunted by avenging furies for what he had done, his hopes for the rest of his life did not turn out as he wished. Although he was freed from the fear of his brothers as rivals for the throne, he found it very hard, almost impossible, to reach the kingdom, because the nation’s hatred of him on that account had become very great. Besides this very unpleasant circumstance, he was troubled still more by the soldiers, who had turned against him, though it was from them that these kings drew all the safety they had whenever they found the nation eager for revolution. All this danger he had brought on himself by destroying his brothers. Still, he governed the nation jointly with his father, being in fact nothing less than a king already. And he was trusted, and relied on the more firmly, for the very thing for which he ought himself to have been put to death; for he appeared to have betrayed his brothers out of concern for Herod’s safety, and not rather out of ill will toward them and, before them, toward his father himself. Such was the accursed state he was in. [a]

All Antipater’s schemes were aimed at clearing the way to do away with Herod, so that there would be nobody to accuse him of the vile practices he was devising, and so that Herod would have no refuge, and no one to help him, since whoever did so would have Antipater for an open enemy. Indeed the very plots he had laid against his brothers arose from the hatred he bore his father. But at this time he was more set than ever on carrying out his attempts against Herod. If Herod were once dead, the government would be firmly secured to him; but if he were allowed to live any longer, Antipater would be in danger once the wickedness he had contrived was discovered, and his father would then of necessity become his enemy. For this reason he became very generous to his father’s friends and gave large sums to many of them, in order to win men over with his good deeds and take away their hatred of him. He sent great presents to his friends at Rome in particular, to gain their goodwill, and above all to Saturninus, the governor of Syria. He also hoped to gain the favor of Saturninus’s brother with the large presents he gave him; and he used the same art with the king’s sister, who had married one of Herod’s chief friends. When he pretended friendship to those he dealt with, he was very subtle in gaining their trust, and very cunning in hiding his hatred of anyone he really hated.

But he could not deceive his aunt. She had understood him for a long time and was a woman not easily fooled, especially since she had already taken every possible precaution against his harmful designs. Antipater’s uncle on his mother’s side was married to her daughter, and this by Antipater’s own connivance and management, though the daughter had before been married to Aristobulus; and Salome’s other daughter by that husband was married to the son of Calleas. Yet that marriage was no obstacle to her exposing his designs, since she knew how wicked he was; her former kinship with him could not prevent her hatred of him. Now Herod had compelled Salome, when she was in love with Sylleus the Arabian and had taken a fancy to him, to marry Alexas. She submitted to the match at the urging of Julia, who persuaded Salome not to refuse it, lest open enmity arise between her and her brother, since Herod had sworn that he would never be on friendly terms with Salome if she would not accept Alexas as her husband. So she yielded to Julia, both because she was Caesar’s wife and because she advised her to nothing that was not very much to her own advantage. At this time also Herod sent King Archelaus’s daughter, who had been Alexander’s wife, back to her father, returning her dowry out of his own estate, so that there might be no dispute between them about it.

Herod brought up his sons’ children with great care. Alexander had two sons by Glaphyra, and Aristobulus had three sons and two daughters by Berenice, Salome’s daughter. Once, when his friends were with him, he presented the children before them. Lamenting the hard fortune of his own sons, he prayed that no such ill fortune would befall these who were their children, but that they might grow in virtue, obtain what they justly deserved, and repay him for his care in raising them. He also had them betrothed for the time when they should reach the proper age for marriage: the elder of Alexander’s sons to Pheroras’s daughter, and Antipater’s daughter to Aristobulus’s eldest son. He also allotted one of Aristobulus’s daughters to Antipater’s son, and Aristobulus’s other daughter to Herod, a son of his own, born to him by the high priest’s daughter; for it is an ancient practice among us to have many wives at the same time. The king arranged these betrothals for the children out of pity for them now that they were fatherless, and in an effort to make Antipater kind to them through these intermarriages. [f]

But Antipater did not fail to bear the same attitude toward his brothers’ children that he had borne toward his brothers themselves. His father’s concern for them provoked his indignation against them, for he supposed that they would become greater than his brothers had ever been, especially once they reached manhood, since Archelaus, a king, would support his daughter’s sons, and Pheroras, who was a tetrarch too, would support the boy who was to marry his daughter. What provoked him also was that the whole people would so pity these fatherless children, and so hate him, that everything would come out, since they were no strangers to his vile disposition toward his brothers. So he set about overturning his father’s arrangements, thinking it a terrible thing that they should gain so much power through these connections. Herod gave way to him and changed his decision at his entreaty, and it was now determined that Antipater himself should marry Aristobulus’s daughter, and Antipater’s son should marry Pheroras’s daughter. So the betrothals were changed in this way, even without the king’s real approval.

King Herod had at this time nine wives. One was Antipater’s mother, and another the high priest’s daughter, by whom he had a son of his own name. He was also married to a daughter of his brother, and to a cousin as well, and these two had no children. One of his wives was of the Samaritan nation; her sons were Antipas and Archelaus, and her daughter was Olympias, who was afterward married to Joseph, the king’s brother’s son. Archelaus and Antipas were brought up with a certain private citizen at Rome. Herod also had as his wife Cleopatra of Jerusalem, and by her he had his sons Herod and Philip, the latter of whom was also brought up at Rome. Pallas too was one of his wives, and she bore him his son Phasael. Besides these he had as wives Phaedra and Elpis, by whom he had his daughters Roxana and Salome. As for his elder daughters, born of the same mother as Alexander and Aristobulus, whom Pheroras had declined to marry, he gave one in marriage to Antipater, the king’s sister’s son, and the other to Phasael, his brother’s son. This was Herod’s family. [j]