The Death of Herod

Herod’s illness grew steadily worse, as was natural when diseases attacked him in old age and in low spirits. He was now nearly seventy, and his soul had been so crushed by the misfortunes with his children that even when he was well he took no pleasure in anything. What aggravated his illness was that Antipater was still alive; he had resolved to put him to death, not offhandedly, but once he had recovered. [a]

Among his misfortunes there was also a popular uprising. There were two teachers in the city who were thought to be the most exact interpreters of the ancestral laws, and for that reason were held in the highest esteem by the whole nation: Judas son of Sepphoraeus, and Matthias son of Margalus. Many young men came to them when they explained the laws, and every day they had a whole army of youths gathered around them. When they heard that the king was wasting away from despondency and disease, they let it be known among their followers that now was the very time to avenge God and to pull down the works that had been built in defiance of the ancestral laws. It was unlawful, they said, to have in the temple images or busts or any work bearing the likeness of a living creature. Yet the king had set up a golden eagle over the great gate. This the teachers now urged them to cut down. If danger should come of it, they said, it was a noble thing to die for the law of their fathers; for those who die in that way, the soul is immortal and the experience of good things lasts forever, while men of base spirit, strangers to their own wisdom, cling to life out of ignorance and choose death by disease over death for virtue. [b]

While they were saying this, a rumor spread that the king was dying, and so the young men set to work more boldly. At midday, while many people were moving about the temple, they let themselves down from the roof on thick ropes and began cutting down the golden eagle with axes. This was reported at once to the king’s commander, who hurried up with a large force, seized about forty of the young men, and brought them down to the king. He asked them first whether they had dared to cut down the golden eagle, and they admitted it. Then he asked on whose orders, and they answered, the law of their fathers. When he asked why they were so glad when they were about to be put to death, they said that after their death they would enjoy greater blessings. [d]

At this the king, in an excess of rage that made him stronger than his disease, went out to an assembly. He accused the men at length of sacrilege and of attempting something greater under the pretext of the law, and demanded that they be punished as impious. The people, afraid that the inquiry would reach many of them, begged him to punish first those who had put the young men up to the deed and then those caught in it, and to let his anger go as for the rest. The king gave way, reluctantly. Those who had let themselves down, together with the teachers, he burned alive; the rest of those arrested he handed over to his attendants to be put to death.

From then on the disease spread through his whole body and divided it among all kinds of suffering. There was a fever, though not a violent one; an unbearable itching over the whole surface of his skin; continual pains in the bowels; swellings about the feet like those of dropsy; inflammation of the abdomen; and a rotting of his private parts that bred worms. Besides this he could breathe only sitting upright, and with difficulty, and he had convulsions in all his limbs, so that those who claimed divine insight said his diseases were the penalty for the teachers. Yet, though he wrestled with so many sufferings, he clung to life, hoped for recovery, and kept thinking up treatments. He crossed the Jordan and used the hot springs at Callirrhoe. These flow out into Lake Asphaltitis, but they are sweet enough to drink. There the physicians decided to warm his whole body with hot oil; but when he was lowered into a tub full of it, he fainted and rolled up his eyes as if dead. His attendants raised an uproar, and at their voices he came to; but from then on he gave up hope of recovery. He ordered fifty drachmas apiece to be given to the soldiers, and large sums to their commanders and to his friends. [e]

He returned to Jericho, now in a black rage, all but threatening death itself, and went on to plan an unholy deed. He gathered the leading men from every village in all Judea into the place called the hippodrome and ordered them shut in. Then he called his sister Salome and her husband Alexas and said, “I know the Jews will celebrate my death with a festival. But I can be mourned on others’ account and have a splendid funeral, if you are willing to carry out my orders. These men under guard — as soon as I breathe my last, surround them with soldiers and kill them at once, so that all Judea and every household will weep for me, whether they want to or not.” [g]

These were his orders when letters arrived from his envoys in Rome, reporting that Acme had been put to death at Caesar’s command and that Antipater had been condemned to die; they wrote, however, that if his father preferred to banish him instead, Caesar would allow it. For a short while this lifted his spirits. But then, racked by lack of food and a convulsive cough, and overcome by his pains, he tried to forestall his fate. He took an apple and asked for a knife as well, since he was in the habit of cutting up apples and eating them. Then he looked around to make sure no one was there to stop him, and raised his right hand to stab himself. But his cousin Achiabus ran up, seized his hand, and stopped him. At once a great wailing rose throughout the palace, as if the king were gone. Antipater quickly heard it, took courage, and in his joy begged his guards to release him for money and let him go. But their commander not only stopped this but ran to the king and reported the attempt. Herod cried out more loudly than his sickness should have allowed, sent his bodyguards at once, and had Antipater killed. He ordered the body buried at Hyrcania. Then he revised his will once more: he wrote in Archelaus, his eldest son and the brother of Antipater, as his successor, and Antipas as tetrarch. [h]

Herod outlived his son by five days and then died. He had reigned thirty-four years from the time he put Antigonus to death and took control of affairs, and thirty-seven from the time the Romans proclaimed him king. In every other respect he enjoyed good fortune, if ever any man did: a private citizen, he won a kingdom, kept it for so long, and left it to his own children. But in his own household he was most unfortunate. Before the army learned of his death, Salome came out with her husband and released the prisoners whom the king had ordered killed, saying that he had changed his mind and was sending each of them home again. Once they were gone, the two made the death known to the soldiers and gathered them, together with the rest of the crowd, into an assembly in the amphitheater at Jericho. There Ptolemy, to whom the king had entrusted his signet ring, came forward, pronounced the king blessed, encouraged the crowd, and read the letter Herod had left for the soldiers, in which he urged them at length to be loyal to his successor. After the letter he opened and read the codicils to the will. In them Philip was made heir to Trachonitis and the neighboring districts, Antipas, as we said, tetrarch, and Archelaus king. Archelaus was charged to take Herod’s ring to Caesar, along with the sealed accounts of the kingdom’s administration, since Caesar was to be master of all Herod’s arrangements and to confirm the will; everything else was to stand as in the earlier will. [j]

At once a shout went up from those congratulating Archelaus. The soldiers and the people came up in companies, promising him their loyalty and praying that God’s favor would be with him too. After this they turned to the king’s burial. Archelaus spared nothing to make it magnificent, but brought out all the royal finery to go in procession with the dead man. There was a bier of solid gold studded with gems, a coverlet of purple worked in many colors, and on it the body wrapped in purple. A diadem lay on his head with a gold crown above it, and the scepter was at his right hand. Around the bier were his sons and the crowd of his relatives, and after them the bodyguards, the Thracian company, and the Germans and Gauls, all equipped as if for war. The rest of the army marched in front, armed, following their commanders and officers in good order, and behind them came five hundred of his household slaves and freedmen carrying spices. The body was carried about nine miles to Herodium, and there, as he had commanded, it was buried. Such was the end of Herod. [l]