Herod the Builder

So in the fifteenth year of his reign Herod restored the sanctuary itself and walled in an area around it twice the size of the old one, at immeasurable cost and with unsurpassed magnificence. The proof of it was the great colonnades around the temple and the fortress that overlooked it on the north. The colonnades he rebuilt from the foundations. The fortress he restored at lavish expense, so that it was in no way inferior to a palace, and named it Antonia in honor of Antony. His own palace he built in the upper city, with two very large and most beautiful buildings, with which not even the sanctuary could at all compare. He named them after his friends, the one the Caesareum and the other the Agrippeum. [a]

Yet he did not stop at recording their memory and their names in buildings; his generosity extended to whole cities. In the district of Samaria he enclosed a city with a very beautiful wall about two and a half miles long, brought six thousand settlers into it, and allotted them very rich land. In the middle of the new city he built a very large temple to Caesar, laid out a sacred precinct around it about nine hundred feet in extent, and named the city Sebaste. He gave its people an exceptionally good constitution. [c]

When Caesar gave him yet another territory, Herod built a temple of white marble to him there too, near the sources of the Jordan, at the place called Panium. There a mountain peak rises to an immense height, and in its side, down at the foot, a shadowy cave opens. Inside it a sheer chasm plunges down to an unmeasured depth, full of still water, and when people let something down to sound the bottom, no length of cord is enough. The springs rise outside, at the foot of the cave, and some think this is the source of the Jordan; but we will give the exact account later. [e]

At Jericho too, between the fortress of Cypros and the former palace, the king built other buildings, finer and more convenient for his stays there, and named them after the same friends. In short, one cannot name a suitable place in his kingdom that he left without some honor to Caesar. And when he had filled his own country with temples, he poured out his honors over the province as well, and set up Caesareums in many cities. [f]

On the coast he noticed a city called Strato’s Tower that was already in decline, but whose fine site could do justice to his generosity. He rebuilt all of it in white stone and adorned it with most splendid palaces, and there above all he showed his natural greatness of mind. For the whole coast between Dor and Joppa, midway between which the city lies, happened to have no harbor, so that everyone sailing along Phoenicia toward Egypt had to ride at anchor in the open sea, under threat from the southwest wind. Even when that wind blows only moderately, it raises such waves against the rocks that their backwash churns up the sea far out. But the king, with his lavish spending and his ambition, conquered nature. He built a harbor larger than the Piraeus, and in its inner recesses other deep anchorages. [h]

Though the site worked against him at every point, he contended with the difficulty so well that the strength of the structure could hardly be overcome by the sea, while its beauty was as finished as if there had been no difficulty at all. Having measured out the size of harbor we have described, he lowered stones into the sea to a depth of about 120 feet. Most of them were fifty feet long, nine deep and ten wide, and some even larger. When the underwater foundation had been filled up, the wall above the sea was widened to two hundred feet. A hundred feet of it was built out in front to break the waves, and so was called the breakwater; the rest supports the stone wall that runs around the harbor. This wall is set at intervals with very large towers, the most prominent and beautiful of which is called the Drusium, after Drusus, Caesar’s stepson. [k]

There were many vaulted chambers for lodging the sailors who put in there, and all around in front of them a broad quay, a promenade for those coming ashore. The entrance faced north, since in that place the north wind brings the clearest weather. At the mouth of the harbor stood three colossal statues on each side, set on columns. Those on the left as you sail in are held up by a solid tower; those on the right by two upright stones joined together, larger than the tower on the other side. Next to the harbor were houses, also of white stone, and the streets of the city ran down to it, laid out at equal intervals. Facing the harbor mouth, on a rise, stood a temple of Caesar, remarkable for its beauty and size. In it was a colossal statue of Caesar, no smaller than the Zeus at Olympia, on which it was modeled, and one of Rome, equal to the Hera at Argos. He dedicated the city to the province, the harbor to those who sailed those waters, and the honor of the founding to Caesar; so he named it Caesarea. [n]

The rest of his works there, the amphitheater, the theater and the marketplaces, he built worthy of the city’s name. He established games every four years, likewise named after Caesar, and he himself was the first to offer the very largest prizes, in the hundred and ninety-second Olympiad. In these not only the winners but those who came second and third shared in the royal bounty. He also rebuilt Anthedon on the coast, which had been destroyed in war, and named it Agrippeum. And such was his affection for that same friend that he even carved Agrippa’s name on the gate he had built in the temple. [p]

Herod loved his father as much as anyone ever has. As a memorial to his father he founded a city in the finest plain of his kingdom, rich in rivers and trees, and named it Antipatris. He walled the fortress above Jericho, outstanding for its strength and beauty, dedicated it to his mother, and called it Cypros. To his brother Phasael he dedicated the tower in Jerusalem that bears his name, whose shape, size and magnificence we will describe later. He also founded another city in the valley that runs north from Jericho, and named it Phasaelis.

Having handed down his relatives and friends to everlasting memory, he did not neglect his own. He built a fortress on the hill facing Arabia and named it Herodium after himself. And the breast-shaped hill, made by human hands, about seven and a half miles from Jerusalem, he called by the same name and adorned more lavishly still. He ringed its summit with round towers and filled the enclosure with most costly palaces, so that not only was the sight of the rooms within splendid, but wealth was poured out on the outer walls, battlements and roofs. At enormous expense he brought in a great supply of water from far off, and he made the ascent with two hundred steps of the whitest marble; for the mound was fairly high, and entirely the work of men’s hands. Around its base he built other palaces able to take in his baggage and his friends, so that, since it had everything, the fortress seemed a city, but in its compass a palace. [q]

After all this building he showed his greatness of spirit to a great many cities abroad as well. He built gymnasiums for Tripolis, Damascus and Ptolemais, a wall for Byblos, halls, colonnades, temples and marketplaces for Berytus and Tyre, and theaters for Sidon and Damascus. He brought water in by aqueduct for the Laodiceans on the coast, and built baths and costly fountains for the people of Ashkelon, and besides these, colonnaded courts admirable both for their workmanship and for their size. To some places he dedicated groves and meadows. Many cities, as if they were partners in his kingdom, even received land from him. Others he endowed with revenues, yearly and forever, for the office of gymnasiarch, as he did for the people of Cos, so that the honor would never lapse. He supplied grain to all who needed it. To Rhodes he gave money for shipbuilding on many occasions and in many places, and when its temple of Pythian Apollo burned down, he rebuilt it better than before at his own expense. Why speak of his gifts to the Lycians or the Samians, or of his generosity throughout Ionia, wherever anyone was in need? Are not the Athenians and the Spartans, the people of Nicopolis and of Pergamum in Mysia, full of Herod’s offerings? And the broad main street of Antioch in Syria, which people used to avoid because of its mud, did he not pave with polished marble, two and a half miles of it, and adorn it with a colonnade of the same length as a shelter from the rain? [s]

These, someone might say, were favors peculiar to each of the peoples he benefited. But his gift to the people of Elis was a gift not only to all Greece but to the whole inhabited world, wherever the fame of the Olympic games reaches. He saw the games failing for want of money, and this one remnant of ancient Greece slipping away. So he not only served as president of the games at the four-yearly festival he happened upon while sailing to Rome, but endowed them with permanent revenues, so that his memory as their president would never fail. It would be an endless task to go through the debts and taxes he paid off for others, as when he lightened the yearly levies of the people of Phaselis and Balanea and of the small towns around Cilicia. But his fear very much hampered his generosity, the fear of inviting envy, or of seeming to hunt some greater prize by doing more for cities than their own rulers did. [w]

Herod had a body to match his spirit. He was always a superb hunter, succeeding above all through his skill in horsemanship; once he took forty wild beasts in a single day. The country breeds wild boar, and is especially rich in deer and wild asses. As a warrior he was irresistible. Many people at his exercises were amazed when they saw him throw the javelin dead straight and shoot arrows unerringly to the mark. Besides his gifts of mind and body he enjoyed good fortune too. He seldom failed in war, and when he did, it was not his own fault, but came either from someone’s treachery or from his soldiers’ rashness. [y]