Alexander in Chains

The quarrel went away with the brothers when they parted, and they left with worse suspicions of one another than before. Alexander and Aristobulus were grieved that the rights of the firstborn had been confirmed to Antipater, and Antipater resented his brothers even for coming second after him. But Antipater, being of a most crafty character, knew how to hold his tongue, and with a great deal of cunning he hid his hatred of them; while they, relying on their noble birth, had on their tongues whatever came into their minds. Many people pressed them and provoked them, and still more of their friends slipped in among them as spies. Everything that was said in Alexander’s company went straight to Antipater, and passed from Antipater to Herod with additions. The young man could not speak a word in all simplicity without being called to account for it; what he said was twisted into slander, and if he spoke a little freely, the gravest charges were fabricated out of the smallest things. Antipater was forever setting people on to provoke him, so that his lies might have some true starting point; and when one of the many rumors was proved, that one gave credit to all the rest. As for Antipater’s own friends, each of them was either close-mouthed by nature or was made so by gifts, so that none of his secrets got out; one would not be wrong to call Antipater’s life a mystery of wickedness. But Alexander’s companions he corrupted with money or won over by flattery, and by these two means he gained everything he wanted and made them traitors and thieves of all that their master did or said. He staged everything with great foresight and laid down the roads for his slanders to Herod with the utmost skill. He himself wore the mask of a brother and sent in others as informers. When something was reported against Alexander, he would come forward and play his part, beginning by making light of what was said; afterward he would quietly build it up and so rouse the king to anger. Everything was made to point to a plot, and to make it look as though Alexander was lying in wait to murder his father; for nothing gave so much credit to the slanders as Antipater’s speaking in Alexander’s defense.

Herod grew savage at all this, and as much as his affection for the young men lessened day by day, so much did he add to Antipater. The courtiers leaned the same way, some of their own accord and some on orders: Ptolemy, the most honored of the king’s friends, and the king’s brothers, and his whole family. For Antipater was everything; and what was bitterest to Alexander, Antipater’s mother was everything too. She advised against them, harsher than a stepmother, and she hated the queen’s sons more than stepchildren are commonly hated. So everyone was already courting Antipater for what they hoped from him, and the king’s commands drew them all away, for he had ordered his most honored friends neither to go near Alexander’s circle nor to pay it any attention. Herod was feared not only by those within his kingdom but by his friends abroad, for Caesar had given no other king so much power: he might bring back anyone who fled from him, even out of a city that was not subject to him. The young men knew nothing of the slanders, and for that reason fell into them all the more unguarded, since their father made no open complaint against them. Little by little, though, they understood from his coldness, and they grew more bitter at what pained them. Antipater also turned their uncle Pheroras against them, and their aunt Salome as well, always talking with her as though she were his wife and stirring her up. Alexander’s wife Glaphyra added to Salome’s hostility by reciting her noble ancestry and claiming that she was mistress over all the women in the palace, since on her father’s side she was descended from Temenus and on her mother’s from Darius the son of Hystaspes. She often taunted Herod’s sister and his wives with their low birth, saying that each of them had been chosen for her beauty and not her family. And there were many of them, since it was permitted by ancestral custom for the Jews to marry several wives, and the king enjoyed having many. All of them hated Alexander because of Glaphyra’s arrogance and insults. [a]

Aristobulus, for his part, made an enemy of Salome, though she was his mother-in-law and already angry at Glaphyra’s insults. He continually taunted his wife with her low birth, saying that he had married a commoner and his brother Alexander a princess. Salome’s daughter told her this in tears, and added that Alexander and his brother threatened the mothers of their other brothers that, once they came to the throne, they would set them to weaving with the slave women, and would make the brothers themselves village clerks, mocking them for having been so carefully educated. At this Salome could not contain her anger, and told Herod everything; and she was all the more believable because she was speaking against her own son-in-law. Another slander ran together with this one and inflamed the king’s rage still more. He heard that his sons were constantly calling on their mother and lamenting her while they cursed him, and that when he gave some of Mariamne’s clothes to his later wives, as he often did, they threatened that before long, instead of royal robes, they would dress them in garments of hair. [g]

For these reasons Herod was somewhat afraid of the young men’s high spirit, yet he did not give up hope of correcting them. Since he was about to sail to Rome, he called them to him. He threatened them a little, as a king, but mostly he admonished them as a father, urged them to love their brothers, and offered to pardon their past offenses if they would be better in the future. They rejected the slanders as false and said they would prove their defense by their deeds. But he too, they said, ought to shut the mouths of the tale-bearers by not believing them so easily; for there would never be a lack of people to lie about them as long as there was someone who would listen. [h]

With this they quickly won over their father, and shook off the fear that was on them for the moment, but they took on grief for the time to come. For they knew that Salome and their uncle Pheroras were their enemies. Both of them were heavy, harsh people, but Pheroras was the more dangerous: he shared in the whole kingdom except the diadem. He had a private revenue of a hundred talents, and enjoyed the produce of all the land beyond the Jordan, which he had received as a gift from his brother, who had also had him made a tetrarch by asking Caesar for it. Herod had honored him with a royal marriage, too, giving him his own wife’s sister, and after her death he had pledged to him his eldest daughter with a dowry of three hundred talents. But Pheroras ran away from the royal marriage for love of a slave woman. Herod was angry and gave the daughter to his nephew, who was later killed by the Parthians; but before long he let his anger at Pheroras go, and forgave him his lovesickness. [i]

Long before, while the queen was still alive, Pheroras had been accused of plotting to poison Herod; but now a great many informers came forward, so that Herod, though he loved his brothers dearly, was brought to believe what they said and to fear it. He put many of the suspects to torture, and at last came to Pheroras’s friends. None of them confessed a plot outright, but they said that he had been preparing to carry off the woman he loved and run away to the Parthians, and that Costobarus, Salome’s husband, was his partner in the plan and the flight. The king had given Salome to Costobarus after her former husband was put to death on a charge of adultery. Nor was Salome herself free of accusation. Her brother Pheroras charged her with having made an agreement to marry Syllaeus, who managed the affairs of Obodas, king of the Arabs, and was Herod’s bitterest enemy. She was convicted of this and of everything else Pheroras accused her of, and was pardoned; and the king also acquitted Pheroras himself of the charges against him. [k]

But the storm that hung over the whole house moved on to Alexander, and came to rest entirely on his head. There were three eunuchs whom the king held in the highest regard, as was plain from the duties they performed for him: one was appointed to pour his wine, another to bring him his dinner, and the third put him to bed and slept beside him. Alexander had drawn these men with large gifts into being his lovers. When this was reported to the king, they were examined under torture, and at once confessed the intercourse. They also disclosed the promises that had led them into it, and how they had been deceived by Alexander. He had told them that they ought not to set their hopes on Herod, a shameless old man who dyed his hair, unless they thought that made him young again; they should look to him instead, who would succeed to the kingdom whether Herod liked it or not, and who before long would punish his enemies and make his friends happy and blessed, and themselves before all. He said that the men of power were already courting him in secret, and that the commanders of the army and the officers came to him privately.

These confessions so terrified Herod that he did not dare to make them public at once. Instead he secretly sent out spies, by night and by day, to search out everything that was done or said, and he put to death at once anyone who fell under suspicion. The palace was filled with dreadful lawlessness. Each man fabricated slanders out of his own private enmity or hatred, and many used the king’s murderous rage against their opponents. Lies were believed on the spot, and the punishments came faster than the slanders. A man who had just accused another was accused himself, and was led off to execution together with the man he had convicted; for the danger to the king’s life cut his examinations short. He went so far in bitterness that he would not look kindly even on those who were accused of nothing, and he was very harsh to his friends. He forbade many of them the palace, and those he had no power to lay hands on he treated harshly in words. Antipater, for his part, set upon Alexander in his misfortunes, and gathered a band of their relatives and left no slander untried. The king was driven to such terror by his monstrous tales and contrivances that he imagined he saw Alexander standing over him with a drawn sword. So he had him seized suddenly and put in chains, and went on to torture his friends. Many of them died in silence, saying nothing beyond what their conscience knew; but some, forced by their pains to lie, said that Alexander was plotting against him with his brother Aristobulus, and was watching for a chance to kill him while he was hunting and then flee to Rome. These statements were not believable, but were made up on the spot under compulsion; yet the king gladly believed them, taking it as some comfort, after chaining his son, that he would not seem to have done it unjustly.