Titans of History

HEROD THE GREAT

c. 73–4 BC

Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under.

Matthew 2:16

Herod the Great was the half-Jewish, half-Arab King of Judaea and Roman ally, whose thirty-two-year reign saw colossal achievements and terrible crimes. Famously handsome in his youth, he was a talented, energetic and intelligent self-made monarch who combined Hellenistic and Jewish culture, presiding over the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple, the embellishment and restoration of Jerusalem, and the building of great cities and impressive fortresses. He created a large, rich and powerful kingdom with a special status at the heart of Rome’s eastern empire. Yet in his lust for power, women and glory, he became the bloodthirsty villain of the Christian Gospels and the despot of Josephus’ Histories of the Jews. Even though he did not actually order the Massacre of the Innocents, as told in the Gospels, he killed three of his own sons, as well as his wife and many of his rivals, and used terror and murder to hold on to power right up until his death.

Born around 73 BC, Herod was the second son of Antipater, an Idumean convert to Judaism and chief minister of the Jewish king Hyrcanus II, great-grandson of Simon the Maccabee, who had established Judaea in 142 BC as an independent Jewish state. The Maccabees had ruled Judaea as both kings and high priests ever since, but to win back his throne in 63 BC, after his brother Aristobulus had wrested it from him, the ineffectual Hyrcanus was forced to ally himself with the Roman strongman Pompey the Great, ceding control of Judaea to Rome. Herod and his father Antipater were shrewd students of politics in Rome, always supporting the winner in the civil wars, from Pompey to Augustus, in order to keep power. When Julius Caesar subsequently appointed Antipater as governor of Judaea in 47 BC, Hyrcanus continued as king in name only, and though he survived a revolt in 43 BC led by his popular nephew Antigonus—a revolt in which Antipater was poisoned—he was exiled three years later. The Parthians, Rome’s rival empire, invaded and overran the Middle East, and Antigonus became king under their patronage. Herod escaped to the protection of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt and thence to Rome, where the two dominant strongmen, Mark Antony and Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus) appointed him king of Judaea. It took him three years to conquer his kingdom. When he took Jerusalem, he slaughtered forty-six of the Jewish ruling council.

Already hated by his people, Herod attempted to legitimize his position by discarding his first wife Doris and marrying the Maccabee princess Mariamme, the teenage granddaughter of Hyrcanus. In all, he was to marry ten times and produce fourteen children, three of whom he murdered while another three eventually succeeded him.

Herod ordered a series of grandiose construction projects, which included aqueducts, amphitheaters, the stunning trading port of Caesarea (considered by many to be one of the great wonders of the world), and the fortresses of Masada, Antonia and Herodium. Most ambitious of all was the rebuilding of the Second Temple in Jerusalem—a massive project that took years to complete. Over 10,000 men spent ten years constructing the Temple Mount alone, and work on the Temple courts and outbuildings continued long after Herod’s death. The last supporting wall remains today the holiest site of Judaism: the Western Wall.

He ruled by terror, having the high priest—his wife’s brother Aristobulus, whom he feared as a potential rival—drowned in 36 BC. Old King Hyrcanus was also killed. Herod’s marriage to the gorgeous, proud Maccabean princess Mariamme was passionate and destructive. They both loved and hated each other, but had two sons together. In 29 BC, he ordered the execution of Mariamme following suggestions she was plotting against him. Later, in 7 BC, he ordered the execution of Aristobulus and Alexander—his sons by Mariamme—after being persuaded by Antipater (his son by Doris) that the two were scheming against him. Augustus joked that he would rather be Herod’s pig than his son since Jews do not eat pigs.

Close friends with Emperor Augustus and his powerful deputy Marcus Agrippa, Herod’s sons were educated at the imperial court in Rome; and his mercantile empire of mines, wine and luxury goods made him probably the richest man in the empire after the imperial family. But by the end the poisonous intrigues of his decadent Jewish–Greek court began to destroy both his family and his reputation as a reliable ruler of the turbulent Middle East. Old age and debilitating health problems (Herod suffered from a horrifying condition that entailed a decay of the genitals, described by the Jewish historian Josephus as “a putrification of his privy member, that produced worms”) brought no respite from the killing. Stung by criticism from the Essenes—a rigid Jewish community—Herod had their monastery at Qumran burned down in 8 BC. Then, when a group of students tore down the imperial Roman eagle from the entrance to the Temple in 4 BC, he had them burned alive. Days before his death, he ordered the execution of his son Antipater, whom he suspected of plotting to take the throne, and his last act was to gather the foremost men of the nation to approve his last will, dividing the kingdom between three of his sons.