Antipater on Trial

When Antipater wrote to Herod that he had done everything he was to do, in the way he was to do it, and would come to him soon, Herod hid his anger against him and wrote back telling him not to delay his journey, for fear some harm might come to Herod himself in his absence. At the same time he made some small complaint about Antipater’s mother, but promised to set those complaints aside when Antipater returned. He also expressed his entire affection for him, because he feared that Antipater might grow suspicious of him and put off the journey, and that while he stayed at Rome he might lie in wait for the kingdom and even bring something about to gain it. Antipater received this letter in Cilicia, but he had already heard at Tarentum the news of Pheroras’s death. That news affected him deeply, not out of any affection for Pheroras, but because Pheroras had died without murdering his father, as he had promised Antipater he would. When he reached Celenderis in Cilicia he began to debate with himself about sailing home, for he was much grieved that his mother had been driven out. Some of his friends advised him to wait somewhere for a while and look for further news. Others advised him to sail home without delay, since once he arrived he would soon put an end to all the accusations; nothing gave his accusers any weight at present but his absence. He was persuaded by these last, and sailed on, and landed at the harbor called Sebastos, which Herod had built at vast expense in honor of Caesar and named Sebastos. And now Antipater was plainly in a miserable condition. Nobody came to meet him or greet him with good wishes and joyful cheers, as they had when he went away. On the contrary, nothing now kept them from receiving him with bitter curses, since they supposed he had come home to be punished for the murder of his brothers. [a]

Quintilius Varus was at Jerusalem at this time. He had been sent to succeed Saturninus as governor of Syria, and had come to sit with Herod as an adviser, since Herod had asked his counsel in his present affairs. As they were sitting together, Antipater came in upon them knowing nothing of what was going on, and entered the palace dressed in purple. The doorkeepers let him in but shut out his friends. Now he was thrown into great confusion, and he soon understood the position he was in, for when he went to greet his father, Herod pushed him away, calling him the murderer of his brothers and a plotter of his own father’s destruction, and told him that Varus would hear his case and judge him the very next day. So he found that the misfortunes he was now hearing of were already upon him, and he went away bewildered by how great they were. His mother and his wife met him (his wife was the daughter of Antigonus, who had been king of the Jews before Herod), and from them he learned everything that concerned him, and then he prepared for his trial. [d]

The next day Varus and the king sat together in judgment. Both their friends were called in as well, and the king’s relatives, with his sister Salome, and all who could reveal anything, and those who had been tortured; and besides these, some slaves of Antipater’s mother who had been seized a little before Antipater arrived. They brought with them a written letter whose substance was this: that he should not come back, because his father had learned everything, and that Caesar was the only refuge he had left, and with it the chance of not falling into his father’s hands. Then Antipater fell down at his father’s feet and begged him not to prejudge his case, but to let him first be heard, and to keep his own mind free of prejudice. So Herod ordered him brought into the middle, and then lamented over his children, from whom he had suffered such great misfortunes, and because Antipater had turned on him in his old age. He counted up the upkeep and education he had given them, and the timely supplies of money he had furnished them as they wished. Yet none of these favors had kept them from plotting against him and putting his very life in danger in order to gain his kingdom, wickedly, by taking his life before the course of nature, their father’s wishes, or justice required that the kingdom should come to them. He said he wondered what hopes could carry Antipater so far as to dare such things. Herod had declared him his successor in a written will; and while Herod lived, Antipater was in no way beneath him in illustrious rank, or in power and authority, since he had no less than fifty talents a year in income, and had received three hundred talents as a gift for his journey to Rome. He also threw in his face the case of his brothers, whom he had accused: if they were guilty, he had imitated their example; and if not, he had brought groundless charges against his near relatives. For Herod had learned all those things from him and from no one else, and had done what was done with his approval; and now Antipater cleared them of all guilt by taking over the guilt of their parricide himself. [e]

When Herod had said this, he began to weep and could say no more. At his request Nicolaus of Damascus, the king’s friend, who was always with him and knew everything he did and the state of his affairs, took up what remained and set out all the proofs and evidence of the facts. Then Antipater, to make his legal defense, turned to his father and enlarged on the many signs he had given of his goodwill toward him. He pointed to the honors that had been paid him, which would not have been paid him if he had not earned them by his devoted care for his father. For he had provided for everything that needed foresight, by giving his wisest advice; and whenever there was need for the work of his own hands, he had not grudged any such effort for him. It was almost impossible, he said, that he who had rescued his father from so many treacherous schemes should himself plot against him, and so lose all the reputation for virtue he had gained by the wickedness that followed it. And this when nothing kept him, who was already appointed successor, from enjoying royal honor alongside his father even now. There was no likelihood that a man who held half that authority without danger and with a good name would hunt after the whole of it with disgrace and danger, when it was doubtful whether he could get it; above all when he had seen the sad example of his brothers before him, and had been both the informer and the accuser against them at a time when they might not otherwise have been found out, and indeed had brought about the punishment they suffered, once it was plain that they were guilty of a wicked attempt against their father. Even the quarrels in the king’s family, he said, were signs that he had always managed affairs out of the sincerest affection for his father. As for what he had done at Rome, Caesar was his witness, and Caesar could no more be deceived than God himself; Caesar’s letters sent here were proof enough of his opinion. It was not reasonable to prefer the slanders of those who meant to stir up trouble to those letters. Most of these slanders had been raised in his absence, which gave his enemies room to forge them; they could not have done so if he had been there. He also showed how weak evidence obtained by torture is, since it is commonly false: the agony men are in under torture naturally drives them to say many things to please those in power. And he offered himself to be tortured.

At this a change came over the assembly. They pitied Antipater greatly, for by weeping and tearing at his face he moved them to feel for him, so that even his enemies were moved to compassion; and it was plain that Herod himself was affected inwardly, though he did not want it noticed. Then Nicolaus began to press the case the king had begun, and with great bitterness, and summed up all the evidence that came from the tortures and from the testimony. Chiefly and at length he praised the king’s goodness, shown in the upkeep and education of his sons, though he had never gained any good from it but fell from one misfortune into another. He admitted that he was not so much surprised at the thoughtless conduct of Herod’s former sons, who were only young and had besides been corrupted by wicked advisers, who led them to wipe out of their minds the righteous dictates of nature from a desire to come to the throne sooner than they ought. But he could only stand amazed, he said, at the horrible wickedness of Antipater. His father had heaped on him benefits enough to tame his reason, yet he could no more be tamed than the most venomous serpents; and even those creatures can be softened somewhat and will not bite their benefactors. Antipater had not let the fate of his brothers hold him back at all, but had gone on to imitate their savagery in spite of it. [i]

“Yet you, Antipater, as you have yourself admitted, were the informer as to the wicked things they had done, and the one who searched out the evidence against them, and the cause of the punishment they suffered once they were found out. We do not say this to accuse you for being so zealous in your anger against them; we are astonished at your efforts to imitate their wickedness. And we find from it that you did not act this way for your father’s safety but for your brothers’ destruction, so that by an outward show of hatred for their impiety you might be believed to love your father, and might gain power enough to do harm with the least risk of punishment. Your actions indeed prove that this was your design. It is true that you did away with your brothers, because you convicted them of their wicked designs; but you did not hand over to justice those who were their partners. By that you made it plain to everyone that you had made a pact with them against your father when you chose to be your brothers’ accuser, wanting to win for yourself alone this advantage of plotting to kill your father, and so to enjoy the pleasure of two contests, a pleasure worthy of your character. One was open, against your brothers, and you exulted in it as though over the greatest of deeds; and it would have been fair to think so, had you not been worse than they. The other contest was hidden, the one you were putting together against your father. You hated them, not as plotters against your father, for in that case you would not have fallen into the same crime yourself, but as heirs to his realm and more worthy of that succession than you. You meant to kill your father after your brothers, so that your lies against them would not be found out; and so that you would not suffer the punishment you deserved, you resolved to exact that punishment from your unhappy father. You devised a kind of parricide so unheard of that the world has never yet seen its like. For you, his son, not only laid a treacherous plot against your father, but did it while he loved you and had been your benefactor; when he had in fact made you his partner in the kingdom and had openly declared you his successor; when you were not forbidden to taste the sweetness of power already, and had the firm hope of what was to come by your father’s decision and the security of a written will. But plainly you did not judge these things by Herod’s goodness, but by your own mind and wickedness. You wanted to take from your too-indulgent father the part that remained to him, and you sought to destroy by your deeds the man you pretended in words to protect. Nor were you content to be wicked yourself. You filled your mother’s head with your schemes, and stirred up trouble among your brothers, and had the effrontery to call your father a wild beast, while you yourself had a mind crueler than any serpent. From it you sent out that poison among your nearest relatives and greatest benefactors, and called on them to help you and guard you, and fenced yourself in on every side with the tricks of both men and women against one old man, as though that mind of yours were not enough by itself to carry so great a hatred as you bore him. And here you stand, after the torture of free men, of household servants, of men and women, who have been examined on your account, and after the statements of your fellow conspirators, hurrying to contradict the truth. You have thought out ways not only to take your father out of the world, but to make void the written law that stands against you, and the integrity of Varus, and the very nature of justice. Indeed, such is the shamelessness you rely on that you ask to be tortured yourself, while you claim that torture made those already examined tell lies; so that those who saved your father are not to be allowed to have spoken the truth, but your tortures are to be counted the discoverers of truth! Varus, will you not deliver the king from the wrongs his own family does him? Will you not destroy this wicked wild beast, who pretended kindness to his father in order to destroy his brothers, while he himself alone stands ready to carry off the kingdom at once, and shows himself the most bloodthirsty butcher of them all toward his father? For you know that parricide is a wrong done both to nature and to the common life of mankind, and that the intention of parricide is no less than the deed; and whoever does not punish it wrongs nature itself.”

Nicolaus went on to add what concerned Antipater’s mother, and everything she had babbled in a woman’s way; and about the predictions and the sacrifices concerning the king; and all that Antipater had done in his debauchery, in his drinking and his love affairs among Pheroras’s women; the examinations under torture; and everything that concerned the testimony of the witnesses, who were many and of various kinds, some prepared beforehand and others giving sudden answers, which further showed and confirmed the earlier evidence. For men who had known of anything Antipater did but had kept silent out of fear that he would escape and take revenge on them, when they saw him exposed to the accusations of the earlier witnesses, and that his great good fortune, which had held him up until now, had plainly betrayed him into the hands of his enemies, who were now insatiable in their hatred of him, told all they knew about him. His ruin was now hastened not so much by the hostility of his accusers as by his own gross, shameless and wicked schemes, and by his ill will toward his father and his brothers. He had filled their house with turmoil and caused them to murder one another, and he was neither fair in his hatred nor kind in his friendship, except so far as it served his own turn. Many had seen all this for a long time beforehand, especially those naturally inclined to judge things by the standard of virtue, since they were used to deciding matters without passion; but they had been kept from making any open complaint before. Now that they were given leave, they brought out publicly all they knew. Nor could the proofs of these wicked deeds be refuted in any way, because the many witnesses neither spoke to please Herod nor were obliged to keep what they had to say to themselves for fear of any danger. They said what they knew because they thought such actions very wicked and that Antipater deserved the heaviest punishment, not so much for Herod’s safety as on account of the man’s own wickedness. Many things were said, too, and by a great many people who were under no obligation to say them, so that Antipater, who was usually very shrewd in his lies and his impudence, could not say one word against them. When Nicolaus had finished speaking and had presented the evidence, Varus told Antipater to turn to his defense, if he had prepared anything to show that he was not guilty of the crimes he was charged with; for he himself wished, and he knew that Antipater’s father wished just as much, to have him found entirely innocent. But Antipater fell on his face and called on God and all men to witness his innocence, asking God to show by some plain sign that he had not plotted against his father. This is the usual way of all men without virtue: when they set about some wicked undertaking, they go to work according to their own inclinations, as if they believed that God had no concern with human affairs; but once they are found out and are in danger of suffering the punishment due to their crimes, they try to overturn all the evidence against them by appealing to God. That is exactly what Antipater now did. Although he had done everything as if there were no God in the world, now that justice pressed him on every side and he could expect no help from any legal proof to refute the charges against him, he shamelessly abused the majesty of God, and credited God’s power with having preserved him until now, and laid before them all the hardships he had ever undergone in his bold actions to protect his father. [k]

So when Varus asked Antipater what he had to say for himself and found that he had nothing to offer but his appeal to God, and saw that there would be no end to it, he ordered the poison brought before the court, to see what strength was still left in it. When it was brought, a man condemned to death drank it by Varus’s order and died at once. Then Varus got up and left the court, and the next day he went away to Antioch, where he usually lived, because that was the seat of government of the Syrians. Herod then put his son in chains. What Varus said to Herod, and with what words he went away, was not known to most people, though it was generally supposed that whatever Herod afterward did about his son was done with his approval. When Herod had put his son in chains, he sent letters to Caesar at Rome about him, along with messengers who were to tell Caesar of Antipater’s wickedness by word of mouth. At this very time a letter of Antiphilus, written to Antipater from Egypt (for he lived there), was seized; and when the king opened it, it was found to contain the following: “I have sent you Acme’s letter, and risked my own life to do it; for you know that I am in danger from two families if I am discovered. I wish you success in your business.” [l]

Those were the contents of this letter. But the king made inquiry about the other letter too, for it was not to be found, and Antiphilus’s slave, who had brought the letter that had been read, denied that he had received the other. While the king was at a loss, one of Herod’s friends noticed a seam on the slave’s inner tunic and a doubling of the cloth (for he had two tunics on), and guessed that the letter might be inside the fold; and so it proved. So they took out the letter, and this is what it said: “Acme to Antipater. I have written your father such a letter as you wanted. I have also made a copy of a letter to my mistress as though it came from Salome. When he reads it, I know that he will punish Salome as a plotter against him.” Now this supposed letter of Salome to her mistress had been composed by Antipater in Salome’s name as to its meaning, but in Acme’s words. The letter was this: “Acme to King Herod. I have done my best that nothing done against you should be kept from you. So, finding a letter of Salome written to my mistress against you, I have written out a copy and sent it to you, at risk to myself but for your benefit. The reason she wrote it was that she wanted to marry Sylleus. So tear this letter to pieces, so that I may not be put in danger of my life.” Acme had also written to Antipater himself and told him that, as he had ordered, she had both written to Herod herself, as though Salome had laid a sudden plot entirely against him, and had sent him a copy of a letter supposedly sent by Salome to her mistress. Now Acme was a Jew by birth and a servant of Julia, Caesar’s wife. She did this out of friendship for Antipater, having been bribed by him with a large gift of money to help in his deadly designs against his father and his aunt.

At this Herod was so astounded at Antipater’s monstrous wickedness that he was ready to order him killed at once, as a troublemaker in matters of the greatest importance, and as one who had plotted not only against himself but against his sister too, and had even corrupted Caesar’s own household. Salome urged him on as well, beating her breast and telling him to kill her if he could produce any credible evidence that she had acted that way. Herod also sent for his son and questioned him about the matter, telling him to contradict it if he could and not to hold back anything he had to say for himself. When he had not a word to say, Herod demanded, since he was caught in his villainy on every side, that he delay no longer but reveal his accomplices in these wicked designs. He laid everything on Antiphilus but named no one else. Herod was then in such grief that he was ready to send his son to Caesar at Rome, to give account there of his wicked schemes. But he soon grew afraid that there, with the help of his friends, Antipater might escape the danger he was in. So he kept him in chains as before, and sent more envoys and letters to accuse his son, with an account of the help Acme had given him in his wicked designs, and copies of the letters already mentioned. [p]