The False Alexander

Meanwhile a young man, a Jew by birth but brought up at Sidon in the house of a Roman freedman, passed himself off, on the strength of a likeness in looks, as the Alexander whom Herod had put to death, and came to Rome in the hope of not being found out. His accomplice was a man of his own race who knew all the affairs of the kingdom. Coached by him, he told how the men sent to kill him and Aristobulus had taken pity on them and smuggled them away, putting bodies that resembled theirs in their place. With this story he deceived the Jews in Crete and was splendidly provided for his journey. He sailed on to Melos, where he collected far more, so completely was he believed, and he even persuaded his hosts there to sail with him to Rome. [a]

Landing at Dicaearchia, he received a great many gifts from the Jews there and was escorted like a king by his father’s friends. The likeness of his features had won him such credit that men who had seen Alexander and knew him well swore that this was he. The whole Jewish community in Rome poured out to see him, and a vast crowd thronged the narrow streets through which he was carried. The people of Melos had gone so far in their madness that they carried him in a litter and kept up a royal retinue for him at their own expense.

Caesar knew Alexander’s features exactly, for Herod had accused him before Caesar, and even before he saw the man he perceived that the likeness was a fraud. Still, allowing the happier hopes some chance of being true, he sent Celadus, one of those who knew Alexander well, with orders to bring the young man to him. As soon as Celadus saw him, he noted the differences in the face; and when he observed that the whole body was coarser and like a slave’s, he understood the entire scheme. What provoked him most was the effrontery of the young man’s story. When people asked about Aristobulus, he said that he too was alive, but had been left behind in Cyprus on purpose as a guard against plots, since the two of them were less likely to be attacked if they were apart. So Celadus took him aside privately and said, “Caesar grants you your life as your reward for naming the man who talked you into so great a deception.” [b]

The young man said he would tell him, and followed him to Caesar. There he pointed out the Jew who had exploited his likeness to make money; he had received more gifts in every city, he said, than Alexander ever had while he lived. Caesar laughed at this, and because of the false Alexander’s sturdy build he enlisted him among the rowers, but he ordered the man who had put him up to it to be executed. As for the people of Melos, the money they had spent was punishment enough for their folly.

Archelaus took possession of his ethnarchy and, remembering old quarrels, treated not only the Jews but also the Samaritans savagely. Both sent embassies to Caesar against him, and in the ninth year of his rule he was banished to Vienne, a city of Gaul, and his property was transferred to Caesar’s treasury. [c]

They say that before Caesar summoned him he had a dream like this. He seemed to see nine ears of grain, full and large, being eaten up by oxen. He sent for the soothsayers and some of the Chaldeans and asked them what they thought it meant. One explained it one way and another another, but a certain Simon, an Essene, said that he took the ears to be years, and the oxen a change of affairs, because oxen turn the land over as they plow it. So Archelaus would reign as many years as there were ears, and after passing through many changes of fortune he would die. Five days after hearing this, Archelaus was summoned to his trial.

I have also thought worth recording the dream of his wife Glaphyra. She was the daughter of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia. Her first husband had been Alexander, the brother of the Archelaus we are speaking of and a son of King Herod, by whom he was put to death, as we have told. After Alexander’s death she married Juba, king of Libya, and when Juba died she returned home and lived as a widow with her father. There Archelaus the ethnarch saw her and fell so deeply in love that he at once divorced Mariamne, his wife at the time, and married her. Not long after she arrived in Judea, she dreamed that Alexander stood over her and said to her: [e]

“Your marriage in Libya should have been enough for you. But you were not content with it. You come back again to my hearth, and have chosen a third husband, and him, you shameless woman, my own brother. But I will not overlook this outrage. I will take you back, whether you want it or not.”

Glaphyra told this dream and lived barely two days more.