John the Baptist and Herod’s Descendants

About this time Aretas, the king of Arabia Petraea, and Herod quarreled, for the following reason. Herod the tetrarch had married the daughter of Aretas and had lived with her a long while. But as he was setting out for Rome, he lodged with Herod, who was his brother, though not by the same mother, for this Herod was the son of the daughter of Simon the high priest. There he fell in love with Herodias, this Herod’s wife, who was the daughter of their brother Aristobulus and the sister of Agrippa the Great. He ventured to speak to her about a marriage between them, and when she accepted his advances, they agreed that she would move to his house as soon as he came back from Rome. One condition of the marriage was that he would divorce Aretas’s daughter. [a]

So Antipas, having made this agreement, sailed to Rome. When he had finished the business he went there for and had returned, his wife, who had discovered the agreement he had made with Herodias, and had learned of it before he knew that she knew the whole plan, asked him to send her to Machaerus, a place on the border between the territories of Aretas and Herod, without letting him know any of her intentions. Herod sent her there, thinking his wife had noticed nothing. But she had sent word a good while before to Machaerus, which was subject to her father, and so everything necessary for her journey had been made ready for her by the general of Aretas’s army. By that means she soon came into Arabia, escorted by the several generals, who passed her on from one to another, and she quickly reached her father and told him what Herod intended.

Aretas made this the first ground of his hostility toward Herod, who also had a dispute with him about their borders in the district of Gamalitis. So they raised armies on both sides and prepared for war, sending their generals to fight in their place. When battle was joined, Herod’s whole army was destroyed through the treachery of some fugitives from the tetrarchy of Philip who were serving in Herod’s army. Herod wrote of these affairs to Tiberius, who was very angry at what Aretas had attempted, and wrote to Vitellius to make war on him and either take him alive and bring him in chains or kill him and send him his head. This was the order Tiberius gave to the governor of Syria.

Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as punishment for what he had done to John, who was called the Baptist. For Herod had killed him, though he was a good man who urged the Jews to practice virtue, both by righteousness toward one another and by piety toward God, and so to come to baptism. For the washing would be acceptable to him, if they used it not to obtain pardon for certain sins but for the purification of the body, on the understanding that the soul had already been thoroughly cleansed beforehand by righteousness. [e]

When others also came crowding around him, for they took the greatest delight in hearing his words, Herod feared that John’s great influence over the people might put it into his power and his mind to raise a rebellion, for they seemed ready to do anything he advised. So he thought it best to put him to death and forestall any trouble he might cause, rather than get himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him regret it when it was too late. So, because of Herod’s suspicion, John was sent as a prisoner to Machaerus, the fortress I mentioned before, and was put to death there. And the Jews were of the opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment on Herod, and a sign of God’s displeasure with him.

So Vitellius prepared to make war on Aretas. He had two legions of heavy infantry with him, and he also took all the light-armed troops and the cavalry attached to them, drawn from the kingdoms that were under the Romans. He hurried toward Petra and came to Ptolemais. But as he was marching in haste and leading his army through Judea, the leading men met him and begged him not to march through their land in this way, for the laws of their country would not let them allow the images to be brought into it, and there were a great many of these on his standards. He was persuaded by what they said and changed the plan he had made. So he ordered the army to march along the Great Plain, while he himself, with Herod the tetrarch and his friends, went up to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice to God, since an ancient festival of the Jews was then close at hand. [f]

When he arrived there and had been honorably received by the Jewish people, he stayed three days, during which he removed Jonathan from the high priesthood and gave it to his brother Theophilus. But when on the fourth day letters came telling him of the death of Tiberius, he made the people take an oath of loyalty to Gaius. He also recalled his army and had every man go home and take his winter quarters there, since now that the empire had passed to Gaius he did not have the same authority to make this war as he had had before. It was also reported that when Aretas heard Vitellius was coming to fight him, he took the omens from the birds and said that it was impossible for this army of Vitellius’s to enter Petra, for one of the rulers would die: either the one who had ordered the war, or the one marching at the other’s wish to carry out his will, or else the one against whom this army was prepared. So Vitellius did indeed withdraw to Antioch.

But Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, went up to Rome a year before the death of Tiberius, to deal with the emperor about some affairs, if he would be allowed to. I now wish to describe Herod and his family and how it fared with them. This is partly because it suits this history to speak of it, and partly because it is a demonstration of the intervention of Providence: that a multitude of children is of no more use than any other strength people set their hearts on, apart from acts of piety done toward God. For it happened that within a hundred years the descendants of Herod, who were very many, were all destroyed except for a few. One may well apply this to the instruction of mankind and learn from it how unhappy they were. It will also show the history of Agrippa, who, being a man most worthy of admiration, rose from a private man, beyond all the expectation of those who knew him, to great power and authority. I have said something about them before, but I will now also give a precise account of them.

Herod the Great had two daughters by Mariamne, the daughter of Hyrcanus. One was Salampsio, who was married to her first cousin Phasaelus, himself the son of Phasaelus, Herod’s brother; her father made the match. The other was Cypros, who also married her first cousin, Antipater, the son of Salome, Herod’s sister. Phasaelus had five children by Salampsio: Antipater, Herod and Alexander, and two daughters, Alexandra and Cypros. Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, married this last Cypros, and Timius of Cyprus married Alexandra; he was a man of note, but had no children by her. Agrippa had two sons and three daughters by Cypros. The daughters were named Berenice, Mariamne and Drusilla, and the sons Agrippa and Drusus, of whom Drusus died before he reached puberty. [h]

Their father Agrippa was brought up with his brothers Herod and Aristobulus. These too were children of the son of Herod the Great by Berenice; and Berenice was the daughter of Costobarus and of Salome, Herod’s sister. Aristobulus left them as infants when he was killed by his father, together with his brother Alexander, as we have already told. When they reached puberty, this Herod, Agrippa’s brother, married Mariamne, the daughter of Olympias, who was the daughter of King Herod, and of Joseph, the son of Joseph who was King Herod’s brother; and he had by her a son, Aristobulus. Aristobulus, Agrippa’s third brother, married Jotape, the daughter of Sampsigeramus, king of Emesa; they had a daughter who was deaf, who was also named Jotape. These so far were the children of the male line.

But Herodias, their sister, was married to Herod, the son of Herod the Great by Mariamne, the daughter of Simon the high priest, and they had a daughter, Salome. After her birth Herodias took it upon herself to flout the laws of our country: she divorced herself from her husband while he was still alive, and married Herod, her husband’s brother on his father’s side, who was tetrarch of Galilee. Her daughter Salome was married to Philip, Herod’s son and tetrarch of Trachonitis. When he died childless, Aristobulus, the son of Herod and brother of Agrippa, married her, and they had three sons, Herod, Agrippa and Aristobulus. This was the line of Phasaelus and Salampsio.

The daughter of Antipater by Cypros was Cypros, whom Alexas Helcias, the son of Alexas, married; they had a daughter, Cypros. But Herod and Alexander, who, as we told you, were Antipater’s brothers, died childless. As for Alexander, the son of King Herod who was killed by his father, he had two sons, Alexander and Tigranes, by the daughter of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia. Tigranes, who was king of Armenia, was accused at Rome and died childless. Alexander had a son named after his brother Tigranes, who was sent by Nero to take possession of the kingdom of Armenia. This Tigranes had a son, Alexander, who married Jotape, the daughter of Antiochus, king of Commagene; Vespasian made him king of an island in Cilicia. But these descendants of Alexander abandoned the Jewish religion soon after their birth and went over to that of the Greeks. As for the rest of King Herod’s daughters, it happened that they died childless.

Since these descendants of Herod whom we have listed were living at the time when Agrippa the Great took the kingdom, and I have now given an account of them, it remains for me to tell of the various hard fortunes that befell Agrippa, how he came through them, and how he was raised to the greatest height of dignity and power.