Bloodshed at the Passover

The journey to Rome that Archelaus was obliged to make became the beginning of new disturbances. He mourned his father for seven days and gave the people a lavish funeral feast. This custom makes many Jews poor, because they are obliged to feast the people, for anyone who omits it is not thought pious. Then he changed into white clothing and went to the temple, where the people received him with all kinds of acclamations. From a high platform and a golden throne he greeted the crowd. He thanked them for the zeal they had shown at his father’s funeral and for the honor they were paying him, as though he were already a king beyond question. But he said that for the present he would refrain not only from exercising royal authority but even from using its titles, until Caesar, who by the will was master of everything, had confirmed his succession. Even at Jericho, he said, when the army had tried to put the diadem on him, he had not accepted it. But he would repay the people in full for their eagerness and goodwill, as he would the soldiers, as soon as those in power had confirmed him as king; for he would take pains to show himself better toward them in everything than his father had been. [a]

The crowd, pleased by this, at once put his intentions to the test with large requests. Some shouted for him to lighten the taxes, others to abolish the duties on goods, and some to release the prisoners. He readily agreed to all of it, to court the crowd. Then he offered sacrifice and feasted with his friends. Toward evening, however, a good many of those bent on revolution gathered and began a mourning of their own, now that the public mourning for the king was over. They lamented the men Herod had punished for cutting down the golden eagle from the gate of the sanctuary. Their mourning was not held in check: there were piercing wails, an orchestrated dirge, and the beating of breasts that rang through the whole city, as for men who, they said, had perished in the fire for the ancestral laws and the temple. They shouted that these men must be avenged on those whom Herod had honored, and that first of all the high priest he had appointed must be removed; it was right for them to choose a man more pious and purer. [c]

Archelaus was provoked by this, but he held back from retaliating because of his haste to depart, fearing that if he made war on the people he would be held at home by the disturbance. So he tried to calm the rebels by persuasion rather than force, and quietly sent his general to urge them to stop. But when the general came into the temple, before he could say a word, the rebels drove him off with stones, and did the same to those who came after him to bring them to their senses — and Archelaus sent many. To everything they answered in anger, and it was plain that they would not stay quiet if they once got numbers on their side. And now the feast of Unleavened Bread arrived, which the Jews call the Passover, when a vast number of sacrifices are offered. A countless crowd poured in from the countryside for worship, and those mourning the teachers stood together in the temple, feeding the sedition. Alarmed at this, Archelaus, before the sickness could spread through the whole crowd, quietly sent in a tribune with a cohort, ordering him to seize the ringleaders of the uprising by force. At this the whole crowd was enraged. They stoned most of the cohort to death, and the tribune barely escaped, wounded. Then they turned back to their sacrifices as though nothing terrible had happened. But it no longer seemed to Archelaus that the crowd could be held in check without bloodshed. He let loose his whole army on them, the infantry in a mass through the city and the cavalry across the plain. Falling suddenly on the people as each was offering sacrifice, they killed about three thousand and scattered the rest into the nearby hills. Archelaus’s heralds followed them, ordering everyone to go home; and they all went away, abandoning the festival. [d]