Archelaus Pleads Before Caesar

At this time also some of the Jews banded together out of a desire for revolution. They mourned Matthias and those Herod had killed with him, who had been given no funeral mourning because of men’s fear of Herod; these were the men who had been condemned for pulling down the golden eagle. The people raised a great clamor and lamentation over them, and hurled some insults at the king as well, as if that would ease the sufferings of the dead. The people gathered and demanded of Archelaus that, to avenge these men, he punish those whom Herod had honored; and first and foremost that he remove the high priest Herod had made, and choose one more agreeable to the law and of greater purity to serve as high priest. Archelaus granted this, though he was greatly offended at their persistence, since he intended to go to Rome at once to learn Caesar’s decision about him. But he sent the commander of his forces to use persuasion: to tell them to give up their folly in such matters and to consider that the death inflicted on their friends was in accordance with the law, and to point out that their demands in these matters had gone to great lengths of injury against him; that the present time was not right for such demands, but required them to be of one mind until he had been established in the government by Caesar’s consent and had come back to them; for then he would consult with them together about what they asked; but for now they ought to keep quiet, so as not to seem rebels. [a]

When the king had suggested these things and instructed his commander in what to say, he sent him to the people. But they shouted him down and would not let him speak, and put his life in danger, as they did that of anyone else willing to venture to say openly anything that might bring them to a sober mind and stop them from going on as they were; for they cared more about having their own way in everything than about obeying their rulers. They thought it unbearable that while Herod was alive they should lose those dearest to them, and that when he was dead they could not get the men responsible punished. So they pressed on with their designs violently, thinking whatever pleased them lawful and right, and being unskilled at foreseeing the dangers they ran; and even when they suspected such a thing, the present pleasure of punishing those they considered their enemies outweighed all such considerations. And although Archelaus sent many to speak to them, men sent by him but appearing to come of their own accord, to soften their anger, they would not let one of them speak. The uprising was led by men in a great passion, and it was plain that they were going further in rebellion, as the crowd came running to join them so fast. [c]

Now the feast of unleavened bread was approaching, which the law of their fathers had appointed for the Jews at this season. This feast is called the Passover, and is a memorial of their deliverance out of Egypt. At it they offer sacrifices with great eagerness, and are required to slaughter more sacrifices than at any other festival; and a countless multitude came there from the countryside, and even from beyond its borders, to worship God. The rebels mourned Judas and Matthias, those teachers of the laws, and kept together in the temple, and had plenty of food, since these rebels were not ashamed to beg for it. Archelaus was afraid that something terrible might spring from these men’s madness, so he sent a cohort of armed men with a tribune at their head to put down the violent efforts of the rebels before the whole multitude was infected with the same madness. He ordered them, if they found any much more openly rebellious than others and busier in stirring up disorder, to bring them to him. But those who were rebelling on account of the teachers of the law roused the people with the noise and shouting they used to urge them on. So they attacked the soldiers, came up to them and stoned most of them, though some escaped wounded, their commander among them; and when they had done this, they went back to the sacrifices that were already in their hands. Archelaus now thought there was no way to keep everything safe unless he checked the crowd’s rush to such deeds. So he sent out his whole army against them, and sent the horsemen to keep those camped outside the temple from helping those inside it, and to kill any who escaped from the foot soldiers and thought themselves out of danger. These horsemen killed about three thousand men, while the rest fled to the neighboring mountains. Then Archelaus had it proclaimed to them all that they should go back to their own homes. So they went away and left the festival, for fear of something worse to follow, though they had been so bold through their lack of instruction. [d]

Then Archelaus went down to the coast with his mother, taking with him his friends Nicolaus, Ptolemy and Ptollas, and left his brother Philip in charge of all affairs, both of his own household and of the state. Salome, Herod’s sister, also went with him, taking her children, and many of her kin were with her. These kin of hers went, as they claimed, to help Archelaus win the kingdom, but in reality to oppose him, and above all to complain loudly of what he had done in the temple. Sabinus, Caesar’s procurator for the affairs of Syria, who was hurrying into Judea to take charge of Herod’s property, met Archelaus at Caesarea. But Varus, the governor of Syria, arrived at that time and held him back from meddling with it, for he had come at Archelaus’s request, through Ptolemy. Out of regard for Varus, Sabinus neither seized any of the fortresses in the Jews’ country nor sealed up the treasures in them, but let Archelaus keep them until Caesar should declare his decision about them; and on this promise he stayed on at Caesarea. But after Archelaus had sailed for Rome and Varus had gone back to Antioch, Sabinus went to Jerusalem and seized the king’s palace. He sent for the commanders of the garrisons and all who had charge of Herod’s property, and declared publicly that he would require them to give an account of what they held; and he disposed of the fortresses as he pleased. But those who held them did not neglect the orders Archelaus had given them, but went on keeping everything as they had been told, and their excuse was that they were keeping it all for Caesar.

At the same time Antipas, another of Herod’s sons, also sailed to Rome to win the government, buoyed up by Salome’s promises that he would rule. He held that he had a far better right to the government than Archelaus, since in the earlier will he had been declared king, and that will, he claimed, was more valid than the one added later. Antipas took his mother with him too, and Ptolemy the brother of Nicolaus, who had been Herod’s most honored friend and was now zealous for Antipas. But it was Irenaeus the orator, who because of his reputation for shrewdness had been entrusted with the affairs of the kingdom, who most of all encouraged him to try for the kingdom. It was through him that, when some advised Antipas to give way to Archelaus as his elder brother and the one declared king by their father’s last will, he would not submit. When he came to Rome, all his relatives went over to him, not out of goodwill toward him but out of hatred for Archelaus. What they most wanted, indeed, was their freedom, to be put under a Roman governor; but if that met too much opposition, they thought Antipas better than Archelaus, and so joined him to help get him the kingdom. Sabinus too accused Archelaus to Caesar by letter. [h]

Archelaus sent in to Caesar his papers, in which he pleaded his right to the kingdom, with his father’s will and the accounts of Herod’s money, and with Ptolemy, who brought Herod’s seal; and so he waited for the outcome. When Caesar had read these papers, and the letters of Varus and Sabinus, with the accounts of the money and of the yearly revenues of the kingdom, and learned that Antipas too had sent letters laying claim to the kingdom, he called his friends together to hear their opinions. Among them was Gaius, the son of Agrippa and of Julia, Caesar’s daughter, whom Caesar had adopted; he gave him the first seat, and invited anyone who wished to speak his mind on the matter before them. Antipater, Salome’s son, a very clever speaker and a bitter enemy of Archelaus, spoke first, to this effect. It was ridiculous, he said, for Archelaus to plead now to be given the kingdom, when in reality he had already taken power over it before Caesar granted it to him. He pointed to his bold actions in killing so many at the Jewish festival. If the men had done wrong, their punishment should have been left to those outside the country who had the power to punish them, and not carried out by a man who, if he claimed to be king, wronged Caesar by seizing that authority before Caesar had decided it for him; and if he admitted he was a private person, his case was far worse, since a man putting in for the kingdom could by no means expect to be granted a power of which he had already deprived Caesar. He also attacked him sharply for changing the commanders in the army, for sitting on the royal throne beforehand, and for deciding lawsuits, all done as though he were nothing less than king. He pointed also to his concessions to those who petitioned him on public matters, doing things than which he could have devised nothing greater if he had already been settled in the kingdom by Caesar. He laid to his charge, too, the release of the prisoners in the hippodrome, and many other things that had either certainly been done by him or were believed to have been done, and might easily be believed, since they were of the kind usually done by young men, and by those who out of a desire to rule seize the government too soon. He charged him also with neglecting the funeral mourning for his father, and with holding merry parties the very night his father died; and it was from this, he said, that the crowd took its occasion to riot. If Archelaus could repay his dead father this way, after he had given him such benefits and left him such great things, pretending to shed tears for him by day like an actor on the stage but making merry every night at having gained the government, he would prove the same Archelaus toward Caesar, if Caesar granted him the kingdom, as he had been toward his father; for he had then had dancing and singing, as though an enemy had fallen, and not as though a man so closely related to him and so great a benefactor were being carried to his burial. But the greatest crime of all, he said, was this: that he came now before Caesar to obtain the government by his grant, when he had already acted in everything as he could have acted if Caesar himself, who ruled all, had fixed him firmly in it. What he stressed most in his pleading was the slaughter of those around the temple, and its impiety, since it was done at the festival; and how they were slaughtered like sacrifices themselves, some of them foreigners and others of their own country, until the temple was full of dead bodies. And all this was done not by an alien but by one who claimed the lawful title of king, so that he might complete the wicked tyranny his nature drove him to, which all men hate. That was why his father, when he was of sound mind, never so much as dreamed of making him his successor in the kingdom, because he knew his character; and in his earlier and more authentic will he appointed Archelaus’s rival Antipas to succeed him. For Antipas had been called to the kingdom by his father, not when his father was failing in body and mind, but when his reason was unimpaired and he was strong enough in body to manage his affairs. And even if his father had once held such an opinion of Archelaus as he had now shown, Archelaus had already given proof enough of what kind of king he was likely to be, when he had deprived Caesar of his rightful power of disposing of the kingdom, and had not refrained from a terrible slaughter of his fellow citizens in the temple while he was still a private person. [i]

When Antipater had made this speech, and had confirmed what he said by bringing many witnesses from among Archelaus’s own relatives, he ended his pleading. Then Nicolaus rose to plead for Archelaus, and said: “What was done at the temple ought to be put down to the intent of those who were killed rather than to the authority of Archelaus. For those who start such things are wicked not only in the wrongs they do of themselves, but in forcing sober men to defend themselves against them. Now it is plain that what these men did in resistance was done, on the face of it, against Archelaus, but in reality against Caesar himself; for they wrongfully attacked and killed the men Archelaus sent, who came only to put a stop to what they were doing. They had no regard either for God or for the festival, these men whom Antipater is not ashamed to champion, to indulge his enmity toward Archelaus rather than out of any regard for what is right. For those who begin such riots and are the first to set about such unrighteous deeds are the men who force those who punish them to take up arms even against their will. The rest of what was done, too, should be laid at the door of all those who are of counsel with the accusers; for nothing charged here as unjust was done except what came from them as its authors. Nor are these things evil in themselves; they are only made to look so in order to harm Archelaus. Such is these men’s eagerness to injure a man who is their own kinsman, their father’s benefactor, well known to them, and one who has always lived in friendship with them. As for this will, it was made by the king when he was of sound mind, and so it ought to carry more authority than his earlier will, and for this reason above all, that Caesar is left in it to be the judge and disposer of all it contains. And Caesar will certainly not imitate the unjust conduct of these men, who all through Herod’s life shared power with him on every occasion, and yet now zealously try to injure his decision, though they have not themselves shown the same regard for their kinsman. Caesar will not, therefore, annul the will of a man who had put everything in his hands, his friend and ally, a will entrusted to him to ratify. Nor will Caesar’s virtuous and upright character, known and undisputed throughout the inhabited world, imitate these men’s wickedness in condemning a king as a madman who had lost his reason, when he has left the succession to a good son of his and has fled for refuge to Caesar’s good faith. Nor can Herod ever have been mistaken in his choice of a successor, when he showed such good sense as to submit everything to Caesar’s decision.” [m]

When Nicolaus had laid these things before Caesar, he ended his plea. Caesar was so gracious to Archelaus that he raised him up when he had thrown himself at his feet, and said that he well deserved the kingdom; and he soon let them know that he was so far inclined in his favor that he would do nothing other than what his father’s will directed and what was to Archelaus’s advantage. Yet while he gave Archelaus this encouragement to rely on him securely, he made no final decision about him. When the assembly had broken up, he considered by himself whether he should confirm the kingdom to Archelaus or divide it among all Herod’s descendants; and this because they all stood in need of much help to support them.