Herod Betroths the Orphans

Antipater now held the succession beyond dispute, but an unbearable hatred rose against him from the nation, for everyone knew that he was the one who had put together all the slanders against his brothers. A fear far from small lurked in him as well, as he watched the children of the murdered men growing up. Alexander had two sons by Glaphyra, Tigranes and Alexander; Aristobulus had by Bernice, Salome’s daughter, three sons, Herod, Agrippa and Aristobulus, and two daughters, Herodias and Mariamne. As for Glaphyra, Herod sent her back to Cappadocia with her dowry as soon as he had killed Alexander. Aristobulus’s widow Bernice he married to Antipater’s uncle on his mother’s side; it was Antipater who arranged this match, trying to win over Salome, who was hostile to him. He also courted Pheroras with gifts and every other kind of attention, and Caesar’s friends too, sending no small sums of money to Rome. Saturninus and his circle in Syria were all loaded with his gifts. But the more he gave, the more he was hated, since he was not giving out of generosity but spending out of fear. So it turned out that those who received grew no better disposed toward him, while those he gave nothing to became bitterer enemies. Yet every day he made his gifts more lavish, because he saw the king, contrary to all his hopes, taking care of the orphans, and showing his remorse for the men he had killed by his pity for their children. [a]

For Herod once gathered his relatives and friends, stood the children before them, and with his eyes full of tears said, “A grim fate took these children’s fathers from me; but pity for their orphaned state, together with nature, commends them to me. I will try, though I have been a most unfortunate father, to be at least a more caring grandfather, and to leave them guardians after me who are dearest to me. I betroth your daughter, Pheroras, to the elder of Alexander’s two sons, so that you will be bound to look after him; and to your son, Antipater, I betroth Aristobulus’s daughter, for in this way you will become a father to the orphan girl. Her sister my son Herod shall take, since on his mother’s side his grandfather is a high priest. Let my decision stand, and let none who love me break it. I pray God to bring these marriages about for the good of my kingdom and of my descendants, and to look on these children with calmer eyes than he looked on their fathers.” [c]

When he had said this he wept, joined the children’s right hands, and after embracing each of them warmly he dismissed the council. Antipater went cold at once, and his distress was plain to everyone. He supposed that the honor his father had shown the orphans meant his own ruin, and that he would be in danger of losing everything again if Alexander’s sons had Pheroras, a tetrarch, to help them, besides Archelaus. He reckoned up how the nation hated him and pitied the orphans, how warmly the Jews had felt toward his brothers while they lived, and how they cherished the memory of men who had perished through him. So he decided to break the betrothals by any means he could.

He was afraid to work on his father by craft, since his father was difficult and quick to suspicion. So he made bold to go to him openly and beg him not to strip him of the honor he had granted him, and not to leave him the name of king while others held the power. He would never keep control of affairs, he said, if Alexander’s son had Pheroras as his father-in-law on top of his grandfather Archelaus. He pleaded with him earnestly, since the royal family was so large, to change the marriages. The king had nine wives, and children by seven of them. Antipater himself was born of Doris, and Herod of Mariamne, the high priest’s daughter. Antipas and Archelaus were the sons of Malthace the Samaritan, as was his daughter Olympias, whom his nephew Joseph had married. By Cleopatra of Jerusalem he had Herod and Philip, and by Pallas, Phasael. He also had two other daughters, Roxane and Salome, one by Phaedra and the other by Elpis. Two of his wives had no children, one a cousin of his and the other a niece. Besides all these, there were the two daughters of Mariamne, the sisters of Alexander and Aristobulus. Since the family was so large, Antipater begged him to change the marriages. [d]

The king was deeply angered when he saw how Antipater felt toward the orphans, and a thought came to him about the sons he had put to death: perhaps they too had been the prize of Antipater’s slanders. At the time he gave Antipater a long and angry answer and drove him away. But afterward he was won over by his flatteries and rearranged the matches. He married Aristobulus’s daughter to Antipater himself, and Antipater’s son to Pheroras’s daughter.

One may see how much Antipater could achieve by flattery in this affair from Salome’s failure in a similar case. She was Herod’s sister, and she pleaded with him many times through Livia, Caesar’s wife, to let her marry Syllaeus the Arab; but he swore that he would treat her as his worst enemy unless she gave up her efforts. In the end he married her, against her will, to Alexas, one of his friends, and married one of her daughters to Alexas’s son and the other to Antipater’s uncle on his mother’s side. Of his daughters by Mariamne, one was married to Antipater, his sister’s son, and the other to Phasael, his brother’s son. [g]