THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HEROD THE GREAT.

CHAPTER VI.-THE CLOSING TRAGEDIES OF HEROD'S

REIGN.

We have in this chapter to relate the chief events which mark the remaining years of Herod's reign (from B.C. 17 to B.C. 4). These are even more fearful in their sanguinary character than some of those which have been given in preceding chapters. Amid the outward prosperity and splendour of his kingdom, Herod became involved still deeper in domestic bloodshed, and ended his days the victim of horrible sufferings of body, and of torments of mind still more horrible.

We have seen how the judicial murder of the wife he adored brought on a temporary derangement of mind, which only slowly yielded to the effect of change of scene and active occupation. Herod, perhaps, thought to appease the shade of the departed, and to draw down the blessing of a benigner influence on his own mind, by devoting himself to undertakings of national utility and public splendour, achievements which made Palestine the envy of surrounding nations. These undertakings did gain for himself an interval of comparative ease, while they contributed to the celebrity and strength of his reign. When, after the building of so many other cities in different parts of his dominion, the noble city of Cæsarea, on the coast, was at last completed, and still more when, in the metropolis, a new temple had arisen more beauteous and resplendent than the nation had ever before beheld, Herod might feel warranted to ask, what more he could do to propitiate Heaven, or to win the attachments of the Jewish people? This latter result he in great degree attained; but the unrestrained fury of his own passions involved his spirit in deeper gloom than even that which he had sought to abate by his public beneficence. When we apprise the reader that the father's maddening suspicions impelled him to sentence to death his two sons by Mariamne, and afterwards his eldest son by a former wife, their accuser, it will be seen that the character of Herod for sanguinary recklessness is almost without a parallel in history. To the circumstances which gradually led to these atrocities,

together with those more public occurrences with which these domestic tragedies were intermingled, we shall now devote the remaining pages of our narrative.

The family of Herod by Mariamne consisted of two sons and two daughters. Bereft of their mother's protection by a cruel fate, these children seemed commended to the fond care of their now repentant and inconsolable father, by claims which gained added sacredness and authority from the gloom of their mother's grave. And for many years these claims were felt and fulfilled. The youthful offspring of Mariamne, representatives of her beauty and her mind, were brought up with a tenderness and care which sought to compensate for their loss. Her two sons, Aristobulus and Alexander, were placed at Rome, in the palace and under the eye of Augustus himself, that they might have their education in every department perfected. Augustus, as well as his friend Agrippa, who were so partial to the father, took a deep interest in these children; and the young Asmonean princes were treated in the palace of the world's ruler with the greatest distinction. Here they remained several years, taught by various masters in Roman and Grecian lore. Here, doubtless, they met at times the questioning gaze of the shrewd Horace, or of his more mild and thoughtful friend Virgil. They mingled in their sports with Marcellus and Drusus, and the future Emperor Tiberius. They became familiar with the splendour of the Roman capital, and with the institutions and usages of the people whose armies had conquered the civilized world. At Rome these two youths remained several years, till their education having been completed in Greek and Roman literature, and in all manly exercises, they were recalled, in the bloom of ripening manhood, to take their position as princes destined for future dominion in the court of their father.

The reception of these sons of Mariamne, after their long absence, was most affectionate on the part of Herod. They had now attained the height and gracefulness of manhood, and their minds had unfolded and become enriched with thought and the stores of various knowledge. The satisfaction of their father was complete, and he was willing to augur for himself, in these youths, the solace of his advancing age, and the prosperity of his name and kingdom after he should be no more.

The enthusiasm of the Jewish people in favour of these sons of Mariamne was still more fervent and unrestrained. Notwithstanding their having been educated in Roman culture, and on a plan alienated as much as possible from Jewish institutions, the nation still hoped that these youths would embrace with renewed interest the faith avowed and inculcated by their mother. Nor were these hopes disappointed. During the few years in which it was permitted them to live, they evinced sympathy with the feelings of their countrymen, and sought to approve themselves worthy descendants of the Maccabean race. Not long after their return, their father secured for them alliances suited to their rank and prospects. Alexander, the younger son, married Glaphyra, a daughter of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia; and Aristobulus married his cousin Berenice, the daughter of Salome, Herod's sister. Yet neither the political influence of the one alliance, nor the domestic intimacy of the other, availed, in the event, to save these youths from the plots which ended in their destruction. Their rapid advance in popular favour, as well as the high position thus given them by their father, gained for them an influence which bore down that of their father's relations, Pheroras and Salome, and awakened their deadly enmity. Pheroras was the younger and favourite brother of Herod; and although he had married a beautiful slave in preference to one of Herod's own daughters, he succeeded in regaining the king's confidence. His low-born wife was embittered still more than her husband against the young princes, who now stood so high in Herod's favour; and Salome, Herod's sister, notwithstanding her nearer connexion with Aristobulus through her daughter, could not endure the prospect of his or her brother's succession to the throne.

But there was a much deeper source to this enmity, and one which gave it a tinge of personal dread, in addition to the feelings of mortified ambition and jealousy. The event which had deprived the young princes of their mother had left, as none of their enemies could doubt, its deep and gloomy impression on their own minds. In the plots which kindled Herod's suspicion against Mariamne, his sister and brother had played a conspicuous part. Was it possible that the sons could be ignorant of this; and if they knew, was it likely that when they, or either of them,

gained supreme power, they would forgive the authors of their mother's mournful fate? Thus they forecast and perhaps exaggerated their own probable peril; and in order to dissipate their guilty apprehensions, they resolve on the death of both the sons of Mariamne. They determine further to accomplish this object by the same hideous instrumentality as that which ended the young queen's days. They plan a constant succession of accusations, which shall awaken suspicion and fear in Herod's mind towards his sons, and involve the father, at last, in the scheme of their destruction. Thus one dire crime brings on the necessity of another to forestall its consequences. Had Herod been innocent of his wife's death, even under the judicial forms of a trial, no representations could have persuaded him to believe that his sons meditated schemes of vengeance against him. Wholly improbable as this was, and without the smallest evidence to support it, the suspicion was resisted by him for a time; but, at last, his own consciousness gave it a colouring which no act of his sons had warranted, and he came to believe in it with a frenzy like that which had condemned the mother to her fate.

In pursuance of their diabolical design, Pheroras, but more particularly Salome, embrace every occasion to insinuate charges of conspiracy against the life of Herod, on the part of Alexander and Aristobulus. They alarm him at one time by cautions against secret poisoning; they rouse his jealousy and fears at another by dilating on the popular qualities of his sons, and the probability of a national revolt in their favour. No caution in conduct, no expression of attachment, no utterance of self-vindicating resentment, could wholly dislodge these suspicions, or avert their ultimate consequences. On three several occasions, during the last six years of their lives, his two sons were placed upon their trial. The interposition of Augustus saved them on their first trial; the influence of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, on the next occasion appeased Herod's fury; the third time, their enemies, or rather their father's own maddening fury, prevailed, and their fate was sealed.

It will throw some light, not only on the melancholy history of these young Jewish princes, but on the relation of the dependent provinces, however distant to the supreme imperial authority at Rome, if we advert briefly to each of