Claudius and Agrippa

Gaius had ruled three years and eight months when he was treacherously murdered. Claudius was then hurried off by the troops in Rome to take power. But the senate, led by the consuls Sentius Saturninus and Pomponius Secundus, entrusted the guarding of the city to the three cohorts that stayed loyal to it, assembled on the Capitol, and, because of Gaius’s cruelty, voted to make war on Claudius. They meant either to establish the government as an aristocracy, the way it had been run of old, or to choose by vote a man worthy to rule.

It happened that Agrippa was staying in Rome at the time, and both sent for him, the senate to consult him and Claudius from the camp, each hoping he might be of use to them as the need arose. Seeing that Claudius was already Caesar in fact, he went over to him. Claudius sent him back to the senate as his envoy to explain his intentions. First, he had been carried off by the soldiers against his will, and he judged it neither right to abandon their zeal nor safe for his own fortune, for even to have been called to the empire was dangerous. Next, he would govern the state as a good ruler and not as a tyrant. He would be content with the honor of the title, and would give everyone a voice in every matter. For even if he were not moderate by nature, the death of Gaius set before him warning enough to practice self-restraint. [a]

Agrippa delivered this message. The senate replied that, trusting in its army and in sound counsel, it would not submit to slavery of its own accord. When Claudius heard the senate’s answer, he sent Agrippa back again to tell them that he could not bring himself to betray those who had united in his support, and that he would fight, though unwillingly, against the men he least wished to fight. But a place for the war must first be fixed outside the city, for it would be unholy that through their bad counsel the sacred precincts of their country should be polluted with the blood of fellow citizens. Agrippa heard this and reported it to the senators. [b]

Meanwhile one of the soldiers on the senate’s side drew his sword and cried out, “Men! Fellow soldiers! What has come over us, that we want to kill our brothers and rush against our own kin who are with Claudius? We have an emperor no one can find fault with, and we are bound by so many claims of justice to the men we are about to march against with arms.” [c]

With these words he rushed through the middle of the senate, drawing all his fellow soldiers after him. The patricians were at once terrified at being deserted; then, since there seemed no other way to safety, they hurried after the soldiers to Claudius. Before the wall they were met with drawn swords by those who were flattering Claudius’s fortune most eagerly. The foremost of them would have been in danger before Claudius learned of the soldiers’ fury, had not Agrippa run to him and shown him how dangerous the business was. Unless he checked the onslaught of men gone mad against the patricians, he said, he would destroy the very men who give his rule its splendor and be king of a desert.

When Claudius heard this, he checked the fury of the soldiers, received the senate into the camp, treated them courteously, and went out with them at once to offer God the thank offerings for his accession. He immediately bestowed on Agrippa the whole of his ancestral kingdom, adding from outside it Trachonitis and Auranitis, which Augustus had given to Herod, and besides these another kingdom, the one called the kingdom of Lysanias. He announced the gift to the people by an edict, and ordered the magistrates to engrave the grant on bronze tablets and set them up on the Capitol. He also gave Agrippa’s brother Herod, who was his son-in-law as well, being married to Bernice, the kingdom of Chalcis. [d]

Wealth naturally flowed in quickly to Agrippa from so large a realm, and he was not slow to spend it. He began to surround Jerusalem with a wall so great that, had it been finished, it would have made a siege impossible for the Romans. But before he had raised the work to its full height he died at Caesarea, having been king for three years, after governing his tetrarchies for three years before that. He left three daughters born to him by Cypros, Bernice, Mariamne and Drusilla, and a son by the same wife, Agrippa. Since the boy was still a mere child, Claudius again made the kingdoms a province and sent Cuspius Fadus as procurator, and after him Tiberius Alexander. They disturbed none of the customs of the country and kept the nation at peace. [f]

After this Herod the king of Chalcis also died. By his niece Bernice he left two sons, Bernicianus and Hyrcanus, and by his former wife Mariamne a son, Aristobulus. Another brother of his, also named Aristobulus, had died a private citizen, leaving a daughter, Jotape. These, as I said before, were the children of Aristobulus the son of Herod. Aristobulus and Alexander were the sons born to Herod by Mariamne, and their father put them to death. Alexander’s descendants reigned over Greater Armenia.