The name of four princes, Idumaeans by descent, who governed either the whole or a part of Judea, under the Romans, and are mentioned in the New Testament.

1. HEROD THE GREAT, Mt 2; Lu 1:5. He was the son of Antipater, an Idumaean, who was in high favor with Julius Caesar. At the age of fifteen years, Herod was constituted by his father procurator of Galilee under Hyrcanus II, who was then at the head of the Jewish nation; while his brother Phasael was intrusted with the same authority over Judea. In these stations they were afterwards confirmed by Antony, with the title of tetrarch, about the year 41 B. C. The power of Hyrcanus had always been opposed by his brother Aristobulus; and now Antigonus, the son of the latter, continued in hostility to Herod, and was assisted by the Jews. At first he was unsuccessful, and was driven by Herod out of the country; but having obtained the aid of the Parthians, he at length succeeded in defeating Herod, and acquired possession of the whole of Judea, about the year 40 B. C. Herod meanwhile fled to Rome; and being there declared king of Judea through the exertions of Antony, he collected an army, vanquished Antigonus, recovered Jerusalem, and extirpated all the family of the Maccabees, B. C. 37. After the battle of Actium, in which his patron Antony was defeated, Herod joined the party of Octavius, and was confirmed by him in all his possessions. He endeavored to conciliate the affections of the Jews, by rebuilding and decorating the temple, (see TEMPLE,) and by founding or enlarging many cities and towns; but the prejudices of the nation against a foreign yoke were only heightened when he introduced quinquennial games in honor of Caesar, and erected theatres and gymnasia at Jerusalem. The cruelty of his disposition also was such as ever to render him odious. He put to death his own wife Mariamne, with her two sons Alexander and Aristobulus; and when he himself was at the point of death, he caused a number of the most illustrious of his subjects to be thrown into prison at Jericho, and exacted from his sister a promise that they should be murdered the moment he expired, in order, as he said, that tears should be shed at the death of Herod. This promise, however, was not fulfilled. His son Antipater was executed for conspiring to poison his father; and five days after, Herod died, A. D. 2, aged sixty-eight, having reigned as king about thirty-seven years. It was during his reign that Jesus was born at Bethlehem; and Herod, in consequence of his suspicious temper, and in order to destroy Jesus, gave orders for the destruction of all the children of two years old and under in the place, Mt 2. This is also mentioned by Macrobius. After the death of Herod, half of his kingdom, including Judea, Ideumaea, and Samaria, was given to his son Archelaus, with the title of Ethnarch; while the remaining half was divided between two of his other sons, Herod Antipas and Philip, with the title of Tetrarchs; the former having the regions of Galilee and Perea, and the latter Batanea, Trachonitis, and Auranitis.

2. HEROD PHILIP. See PHILP.

3. HEROD ANTIPAS, Lu 3:1, was the son of Herod the Great by Malthace his Samaritan wife, and own brother to Archelaus, along with whom he was educated at Rome. After the death of his father, he was appointed by Augustus to be tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, that is, the southern part of the country east of the Jordan, Lu 3:1, whence also the general appellation of king is sometimes given to him, Mr 6:14. The Savior, as a Galilean, was under his jurisdiction, Lu 23:6-12. He first married a daughter of Aretas, and Arabian king; but afterwards becoming enamoured of Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip, and his own niece, he dismissed his former wife, and induced Herodias to leave her husband and connect herself with him. At her instigation he afterwards went to Rome to ask for the dignity and title of the king; but being there accused before Caligula, at the instance of Herod Agrippa, his nephew and the brother of Herodias, he was banished to Lugdunum (now Lyons) in Gaul, about A. D. 41, and the provinces which he governed were given to Herod Agrippa. It was Herod Antipas who caused John the Baptist to be beheaded, Mt 14:1-12; Mr 6:14-29. He also appears to have been a follower, or at least a favorer, of the sect of the Sadducees, Mr 8:15. Compare Mt 16:6. See HERODIANS.

4. HEROD AGRIPPA MAJOR or I, Ac 12.1-25; 23.35, was the grandson of Herod the Great and Mariamne, the son of the Aristobulus who was put to death with his mother, by the orders of his father. (See above, HEROD I.) On the accession of Caligula to the imperial throne, Agrippa was taken from prison, where he had been confined by Tiberius, and received from the emperor, A. D. 38, the title of king, together with the provinces which had belonged to his uncle Philip the tetrarch Lysanias. (See ABILENE.) He was afterwards confirmed in the possession of these by Claudius, who also annexed to is kingdom all those parts of Judea and Samaria which had formerly belonged to his grandfather Herod, A. D. 43. In order to ingratiate himself with the Jews, he commenced a persecution against the Christians; but seems to have proceeded no further than to put to death James, and to imprison Peter, since he soon after died suddenly and miserably at Cesarea, A. D. 44, Ac 12. He is mentioned by Josephus only under the name of Agrippa.

5. HEROD AGRIPPA MINOR or II, Ac 25-26, was the son of Herod Agrippa I, and was educated at Rome, under the care of the emperor Claudius. On the death of his father, when he was seventeen years old, instead of causing him to succeed to his father's kingdom of Chalcis, which had belonged to his Uncle Herod. He was afterwards transferred (A. D. 53) from Chalcis, with the title of king, to the government of those provinces which his father at first possessed, namely, Batanea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, and Abilene, to which several other cities were afterwards added. He is mentioned in the New Testament and by Josephus only by the name of Agrippa. It was before him that St. Paul was brought by Festus, Ac 25:13; 26. He died on the third year of Trajan's reign, at the age of seventy years.

Of Idumean descent (Josephus, Ant. 14:1, section 3). The Idumeans were conquered and brought to Judaism by John Hyrcanus, 130 B.C. Thus the Herods, though aliens by birth, were Jews in faith. They made religion an engine of state policy. Eschewing Antiochus Epiphanes' design to Graecize Jerusalem by substituting the Greek worship and customs for the Jewish law, the Herod's, while professing to maintain the law, as effectively set at nought its spirit by making it a lever for elevating themselves and their secular kingdom. For this end Herod adorned gorgeously the temple with more than Solomonic splendor.

Thus a descendant of Esau tried still to get from Jacob the forfeited blessing (Ge 27:29,40), in vain setting up an earthly kingdom on a professed Jewish basis, to rival Messiah's spiritual kingdom, as it was then being fore-announced by John Baptist. The "Herodians" probably cherished hopes of Herod's kingdom becoming ultimately, though at first necessarily leaning on Rome, an independent Judaic eastern empire. The Jewish religion thus degraded into a tool of ambition lost its spiritual power, and the theocracy becoming a lifeless carcass was the ready prey for the Roman eagles to pounce upon and destroy (Mt 24:28). (See HERODIANS.)

1. HEROD THE GREAT (Matthew 2; Lu 1:5), second son of Antipater (who was appointed by Julius Caesar procurator of Judaea, 47 B.C.) and Cypros, a noble Arabian. At the time of Antipater's elevation, though only 15 (or as other passages of Josephus make probable, 20), he received the government of Galilee and soon afterwards Coelo-Syria. He skillfully gained the favor of Antony, who made him and his elder brother Phasael joint tetrarchs of Judea. Forced to abandon Judaea by the Parthians, who supported Antigonus the representative of the Asmonaean dynasty, Herod fled to Rome (40 B.C.), where he was well received by Antony and Octavian, and made by the senate "king of Judea." With Roman help he took Jerusalem (37 B.C.), slew his leading adversaries there, including the whole Sanhedrin except two, and established his kingly authority.

Undertaking next for Antony an expedition to Arabia against Malchus, he thereby escaped taking share in the war between Antony his patron and Octavian. After the battle of Actium he gained, by a mixture of humility and boldness at Rhodes, the favor of Octavian the conqueror, who confirmed him in the kingdom, and added several cities along with the province of Trachonitis and district of Paneas. But external prosperity did not save him from internal troubles, the fruits of his own lust and insatiable cruelty. He put to death successively Hyrcanus, his wife Mariamne's grandfather, Mariamne herself to whom he had been passionately attached, his two sons by her, Alexander and Aristobulus, and just four days before his death signed the order for executing their bitter accuser, his oldest son Antipater.

At last, seized with a fatal disease in the stomach and bowels, he became more cruel than ever; he ordered that the nobles whom he had called to him should be slain immediately after his decease, that there might be no lack of mourners at his death. It was at this time that he ordered the slaughter of all males, from two years old and under, in and about Bethlehem, the foretold birthplace of the expected Messiah. Josephus does not notice this, probably both because of his studied reserve as to Jesus' claims, and also because the slaughter of a comparatively few infants in a village seemed unimportant as compared with his other abounding deeds of atrocity. Macrobius long subsequently (A.D. 410) says that "when Augustus heard that among the children whom Herod ordered to be killed Herod's own son (Antipater) was slain, he remarked, It would be better to be one of Herod's swine than Herod's sons," punning on the similar sounding Greek terms for "son" and "swine", hus, huios.

Herod being a professed Jew his swine as unclean were safe from death, his sons were not. Josephus records what illustrates the Scripture account of the massacre of the innocents; "Herod slew all those of his own family who sided with the Pharisees, looking forward to a change in the royal line" (Ant. 17:2, section 6). As Matthew says, "Herod privily called the wise men and inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared." So Josephus says: "an Essene, Menahem, foretold when Herod was a boy he should be king. Accordingly when he was in full power he sent for Menahem and inquired of him how long he should reign. Menahem did not define the time, but in answer to Herod's question whether ten years or not, replied, Yes 20, nay 30 years" (Ant. 15:10, section 5).

Herod's keenness to establish his dynasty, jealousy of any rival, craft, hypocrisy, cruelty, recklessness of any sacrifice to gain his object, appear as vividly in the Scripture narrative as in Josephus. The wise men's question, "Where is he that is born king of the Jews?" was precisely one to excite Herod's jealousy. For Herod was not a born Jew, much less born king of the Jews, but an Idumean alien, made king by the anti-Jewish world power, Rome. Unimportant as the event seemed to the world, the murder of the innocents was the consummation of his guilt before God, and places him among the foremost of Satan's and the world's foretold (Jer 31:15) representative adversaries of the Lord and His church, answering to the Pharaoh who oppressed Christ's type, Israel, murdering the male children in the nation's infancy in order to stifle the nation's first beginnings; but in vain, for God secured the nation's Exodus from Egypt by the tyrant's overthrow, just as subsequently He saved Jesus and destroyed Herod, and in due time "called His (antitypical) Son out of Egypt" (Mt 2:15; compare Ho 11:1).

Herod's death and Jesus' birth therefore must have been at least four years before the era known as A.D. Ambition was his ruling passion. For its sake he compromised the Jewish religion which he professed, in order to conciliate Rome, by offerings to the Capitoline Jupiter at his elevation to the throne. He rebuilt the temple of Apollo at Rhodes, which had been consumed by fire, "the greatest and most illustrious of all his works" according to Josephus. He built a theater and amphitheater, and introduced pagan games in honour of Caesar every fifth year at Jerusalem. He rebuilt Samaria and its temple, and called it Sebaste (Greek for Augusta) in honour of Augustus; also Caesarea on the site of Straton, and made provision at it for pagan worship. At Paneas he dedicated a temple of white marble to Augustus. The stricter Jews were so offended that ten men conspired to kill him in the theater at Jerusalem.

Being detected by a spy they were put to death, but the spy was torn to pieces afterward by the mob. Thereupon he erected the castle of Antonia, near the temple, to overawe the disaffected. However, he turned the tide of feeling in his favor by two acts. In the 13th year of his reign during a severe famine he spent all his resources and sold even valuable works of art to import grain from Egypt for the relief of the people. Still more did he win popularity by rebuilding the temple on a magnificent scale, to vie with that of Solomon; yet with such scrupulous care that it seemed a restoration rather than a new building. He inaugurated the work with a set speech. The building of the temple itself began in 20 B.C., and was finished in a year and a half. The surrounding buildings occupied eight years more. But still fresh additions continued to be made, so that at the beginning of Jesus' ministry the Jews said, "Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt Thou rear it up in three days?"

At that time He was 30 years old, which added to 16 years (for 20 B.C., when Herod began building, means only 16 before His real date of birth) makes 46. It has been thought that he used the opportunity of building the temple to destroy the authentic genealogies of the priesthood, and that the monument which he raised over the tombs of the kings was owing to superstitious fear after his sacrilegious attempt to rob them of treasures. His title "Herod the Great" was given him in admiration of splendid and s

The main interest attaching to the Herods is not concerned with their character as individual rulers. They acquire dignity when they are viewed as parts of a supremely dramatic situation in universal history. The fundamental elements in the situation are two. First, the course of world-power in antiquity, and the relation between it and the political principle in the constitution of the Chosen People. Second, the religious genius of Judaism, and its relation to the political elements in the experience of the Jews.

A glance at the map shows that Palestine is an organic part of the Mediterranean world. When, under the successors of Alexander, the centre of political gravity shifted from Persia to the shores of the Great Sea, the door was finally closed against the possibility of political autonomy in the Holy Land. The kingdom of the Seleucids had a much larger stake in the internal affairs of the country than the Persian Empire thought of claiming. For one thing, the political genius of the Greeks demanded a more closely knit State than the Persian. For another, the fact that Palestine was the frontier towards Egypt made its political assimilation to Northern Syria a military necessity. The Maccab

Her'od the Great.

He was the son of Antipater an Idumaean, who was a proselyte to Judaism. His father having aided Caesar in his war with Egypt was rewarded by being made procurator of all Judaea, and he made his son Herod, then only fifteen years of age, governor of Galilee. On the death of Julius Caesar the country was in anarchy; but eventually Herod contrived to ingratiate himself with Antony and Octavian, and was appointed KING OF JUDAEA. He began his reign (B.C. 37) with blood: there were a few left of the Asmonaean house, descendants of the Maccabees; these were put to death and their adherents, and the whole of the Sanhedrim except two.

Herod had married Mariamne, daughter of Alexandra, who had a son named Aristobulus, a descendant of the Maccabees. Herod, being afraid of Rome to which Alexandra had appealed, made Aristobulus high priest; but when he witnessed the joy of the people his jealousy was aroused, and he caused the young man to be drowned, while bathing with his comrades, through their pretended rough play. Herod honoured his funeral, but none were deceived, and on Alexandra appealing to Cleopatra and Antony, he was summoned to appear. He left orders with his uncle Joseph that if he were put to death, Mariamne was to be killed. Herod succeeded in satisfying Antony; and indeed he had Coele-syria added to his dominions. On his return, his sister Salome poisoned his mind with suspicions of his wife's infidelity with Joseph, who had unwisely betrayed the orders of Herod. He was however reconciled with his wife, but Joseph was put to death and Alexandra imprisoned.

On Octavian becoming emperor, Herod contrived to secure his favour. Herod's domestic life was however greatly embittered by his renewed suspicions against his wife (who had again discovered that during his absence orders had been given to put her to death if he lost his life). He seemed to think her guilty and she was sacrificed to his jealousy; but as soon as his beautiful wife was slain he was filled with the deepest remorse. Her mother also was put to death. For Herod's other wives, see HEROD, FAMILY OF.

Though Herod was nominally attached to Judaism he tried to introduce into Jerusalem Grecian and Roman games. These things were great eye-sores to the strict Jews, but a great many were won over to these follies.

The year B.C. 25 was one of famine in Judaea, and Herod sacrificed his gold and silver plate to purchase corn from Egypt to feed the people, and he gave them seed for the next year, by which he gained popularity.

Herod also ingratiated himself with the Jews by his costly enterprise of rebuilding the temple. To allay their suspicions, he procured the material before he demolished any part. The new edifice was a stately one of white marble.

New fears destroyed the peace of Herod. On the return of his two sons by Mariamne, now grown to manhood, they were hailed with enthusiasm by the people. He feared they would avenge their mother's death, therefore after trivial charges they were both strangled. This was followed by Antipater, another son, being put to death, who was proved to be guilty of plotting to have his father poisoned.

Herod's body was greatly diseased: the increasing torments had even caused him to attempt suicide. He ordered that the heads of the chief families in Judaea should be shut up in the Hippodrome at Jericho, to be put to death as soon as he expired, that there might be mourning at his death! This cruel order was not carried out.

His anxieties were heightened by the visit of the Magi to Jerusalem, inquiring for the child who had been born KING OF THE JEWS. Herod cunningly sought to find out what child was to have this honour, that he might at once cut him off. Being thwarted by the Magi he ordered the massacre of all the infants in the district; but God had sent away His Son from his power. Mt 2:1-22. Herod died B.C. 4. This was the first earthly 'power' that had anything to do with the Lord Jesus. We know from Re 12:1-5 that Satan was really the actor through Herod; but he was defeated then and will be again and again until his final doom.

Her'od

(hero-like). This family though of Idumean origin and thus alien by race, was Jewish in faith. I. HEROD THE GREAT was the second son of Antipater, an Idumean, who was appointed procurator of Judea by Julius Caesar, B.C. 47. Immediately after his father's elevation when only fifteen years old, he received the government of Galilee and shortly afterward that of Coele-Syria. Though Josephus says he was 15 years old at this time, it is generally conceded that there must be some mistake, as he lived to be 69 or 70 years old, and died B.C. 4; hence he must have been 25 years old at this time.--ED.) In B.C. 41 he was appointed by Antony tetrarch of Judea. Forced to abandon Judea the following year, he fled to Rome, and received the appointment of king of Judea. In the course of a few years, by the help of the Romans he took Jerusalem (B.C. 37), and completely established his authority throughout his dominions. The terrible acts of bloodshed which Herod perpetrated in his own family were accompanied by others among his subjects equally terrible, from the number who fell victims to them. According to the well-known story) he ordered the nobles whom he had called to him in his last moment to be executed immediately after his decease, that so at least his death might be attended by universal mourning. It was at the time of his fatal illness that he must have caused the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem.

Mt 2:16-18

He adorned Jerusalem with many splendid monuments of his taste and magnificence. The temple, which he built with scrupulous care, was the greatest of these works. The restoration was begun B.C. 20, and the temple itself was completed in a year and a half. But fresh additions were constantly made in succeeding years, so that it was said that the temple was "built in forty and six years,"

Joh 2:20

the work continued long after Herod's death. (Herod died of a terrible disease at Jericho, in April, B.C. 4, at the age of 69, after a long reign of 37 years.--ED.) II. HEROD ANTIPAS was the son of Herod the Great by Malthake, a Samaritan. He first married a daughter of Aretas, "king of Arabia Petraea," but afterward Herodias, the wife of his half-brother, Herod Philip. Aretas, indignant at the insult offered to his daughter, found a pretext for invading the territory of Herod, and defeated him with great loss. This defeat, according to the famous passage in Josephus, was attributed by many to the murder of John the Baptist, which had been committed by Antipas shortly before, under the influence of Herodias.

See Antipas

See Antipas (2)

Mt 14:4

ff.; Mark 6:17 ff.; Luke 3:19 At a later time the ambition of Herodias proved the cause of her husband's ruin. She urged him to go to Rome to gain the title of king, cf.

Mr 6:14

but he was opposed at the court of Caligula by the emissaries of Agrippa, and condemned to perpetual banishment at Lugdunum, A.D. 39. Herodias voluntarily shared his punishment, and he died in exile. Pilate took occasion from our Lord's residence in Galilee to bend him for examination,

Lu 23:6

ff., to Herod Antipas, who came up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. The city of Tiberias, which Antipas founded and named in honor of the emperor, was the most conspicuous monument of his long reign. III. HEROD PHILIP I. (Philip,)

Mr 6:17

was the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne. He married Herodias the sister of Agrippa I by whom he had a daughter, Salome. He was excluded from all share in his father's possessions in consequence of his mother's treachery, and lived afterward in a private station. IV. HEROD PHILIP II. was the son of Herod the Great and Cleopatra. He received as his own government Batanea Trachonitis, Auramtis (Gaulanitis), and some parts about Jamnia, with the title of tetrarch. Luke 3:1. He built a new city on the site of Paneas, near the sources of the Jordan, which be called Caesarea Philippi,

Mt 16:13; Mr 8:27

and raised Bethsaida to the rank of a city under the title of Julias and died there A.D. 34. He married Salome, the daughter of Herod Philip I. and Herodias. V. HEROD AGRIPPA I. was the son of Aristobulus and Berenice, and grandson of Herod the Great. He was brought up at Rome, and was thrown into prison by Tiberius, where he remained till the accession of Caligula, who made him king, first of the tetrarchy of Philip and Lysanias; afterward the dominions of Antipas were added, and finally Judea and Samaria. Unlike his predessors, Agrippa was a strict observer of the law, and he sought with success the favor of the Jews. It is probable that it was with this view he put to death James the son of Zebedee, and further imprisoned Peter.

Ac 12:1

ff. But his sudden death interrupted his ambitious projects.

Ac 12:21,23

VI. HEROD AGRIPPA II --was the son of Herod Agrippa I. In A.D. 62 the emperor gave him the tetrarches formerly held by Philip and Lysanias, with the title of king.

Ac 25:13

The relation in which he stood to his sister Berenice,

Ac 25:13

was the cause of grave suspicion. It was before him that Paul was tried.

Ac 26:28

HEROD, surnamed the Great, king of the Jews, second son of Antipater the Idumean, born B.C. 17. At the age of twenty-five he was made by his father governor of Galilee, and distinguished himself by the suppression of a band of robbers, with the execution of their leader, Hezekiah, and several of his comrades. As he had performed this act of heroism by his own authority, and had executed the culprits without the form of trial, he was summoned before the sanhedrim, but, through the strength of his party and zeal of his friends, he escaped any censure. In the civil war between the republican and Caesarian parties, Herod joined Cassius, and was made governor of Coelo-Syria; and when Mark Antony arrived victorious in Syria, Herod and his brother found means to ingratiate themselves with him, and were appointed as tetrarchs in Judea; but in a short time an invasion of Antigonus, who was aided by the Jews, obliged Herod to make his escape from Jerusalem, and retire first to Idumea, and then to Egypt. He at length arrived at Rome, and obtained the crown of Judea upon occasion of a difference between the two branches of the Asmodean family. Hyrcanus had been for a considerable time prince and high priest of the Jewish nation; but while the Roman empire was in an unsettled state, after the death of Julius Caesar, Antigonus, son of Aristobulus, brother of Hyrcanus, made himself master of the city and all Judea. In this state Herod found things when he came to Rome, and the most that he then aimed at was to obtain the kingdom for Aristobulus, his wife's brother; but the senate of Rome, moved by the recommendations of Mark Antony, conferred the kingdom of Judea upon Herod himself. Having met with this unexpected success at Rome, he returned without delay to Judea, and in about three years got possession of the whole country. He had, however, to fight his way to the throne, which, as we have seen, was in the possession of Antigonus. Though aided by the Roman army, he was obliged to lay siege to Jerusalem, which held out for six months, when it was carried by assault, and a vast slaughter was made of the inhabitants, till the intercession and bribes of Herod put an end to it. Antigonus was taken prisoner and put to death, which opened the way to Herod's quiet possession of the kingdom. His first cares were to replenish his coffers, and to repress the faction still attached to the Asmodean race, and which regarded him as a usurper. He was guilty of many extortions and cruelties in the pursuit of these objects. Shortly after this, an accusation was lodged against Herod before Mark Antony by Cleopatra, who had been influenced to the deed by his mother-in-law, Alexandra. He was summoned to answer to the charges exhibited against him before the triumvir; and on this occasion he gave a most remarkable display of the conflict of opposite passions in a ferocious heart. Doatingly fond of his wife, Mariamne, and not being able to bear the thought of her falling into the hands of another, he exacted a solemn promise from Joseph, whom he appointed to govern in his absence, that should the accusation prove fatal to him he would put the queen to death. Joseph disclosed the secret to Mariamne, who, abhorring such a savage proof of his love, from that moment conceived the deepest and most settled aversion to her husband. Herod, by great pecuniary sacrifices, made his peace with Antony, and returned in high credit. Some hints were thrown out respecting Joseph's familiarity with Mariamne during his absence; he communicated his suspicions to his wife, who, recriminating, upbraided him with his cruel order concerning her. His rage was unbounded; he put Joseph to death for communicating the secret entrusted to him alone, and he threw his mother-in-law, Alexandra, into prison.

2. In the war between Antony and Octavius, Herod raised an army for the purpose of joining the former; but he was obliged first to engage Malchus, king of Arabia, whom he defeated and obliged to sue for peace. After the battle of Actium, his great object was to make terms with the conqueror; and, as a preliminary step, he put to death Hyrcanus, the only surviving male of the Asmodeans; and having secured his family, he embarked for Rhodes, where Augustus at that time was. He appeared before the master of the Roman world in all the regal ornaments excepting his diadem, and with a noble confidence related the faithful services he had performed for his benefactor, Antony, concluding that he was ready to transfer the same gratitude to a new patron, from whom he should hold his crown and kingdom. Augustus was struck with the magnanimity of the defence, and replaced the diadem on the head of Herod, who remained the most favoured of the tributary sovereigns. When the emperor afterward travelled through Syria, in his way to and from Egypt, he was entertained, with the utmost magnificence by Herod; in recompense for which he restored to him all his revenues and dominions, and even considerably augmented them. His good fortune as a prince, was poisoned by domestic broils, and especially by the insuperable aversion of Mariamne, whom at length he brought to trial, convicted, and executed. She submitted to her fate with all the intrepidity of innocence, and was sufficiently avenged by the remorse of her husband, who seems never after to have enjoyed a tranquil hour.

3. His rage being quenched, Herod endeavoured to banish the memory of his evil acts from his mind by scenes of dissipation; but the charms of his once loved Mariamne haunted him wherever he went: he would frequently call aloud upon her name, and insist upon his attendants bringing her into his presence, as if willing to forget that she was no longer among the living. At times he would fly from the sight of men, and on his return from solitude, which was ill suited to a mind conscious of the most ferocious deeds, he became more brutal than ever, and in fits of fury spared neither foes nor friends. Alexandra, whose malignity toward her daughter has been noticed, was an unpitied victim to his rage. At length. he recovered some portion of self-possession, and employed himself in projects of regal magnificence. He built at Jerusalem a stately theatre and amphitheatre, in which he celebrated games in honour of Augustus, to the great displeasure of the zealous Jews, who discovered an idolatrous profanation in the theatrical ornaments and spectacles. Nothing, it is said, gave them so much offence as some trophies which he had set round his theatre in honour of Augustus, and in commemoration of his victories, but which the Jews regarded as images devoted to the purposes of idol worship. For this and other acts of the king a most serious conspiracy was formed against him, which he, fortunately for himself, discovered; and he exercised the most brutal revenge on all the parties concerned in it. He next built Samaria, which he named Sebaste, and adorned it with the most sumptuous edifices; and for his security he built several fortresses throughout the whole of Judea, of which the principal was called Caesarea, in honour of the emperor. In his own palace, near the temple of Jerusalem, he lavished the most costly materials and curious workmanship; and his palace Herodion, at some miles' distance from the capital, by the beauty of its situation, and other appropriate advantages, drew round it the population of a considerable city.

4. To supply the place of his lost Mariamne, he married a new wife of the same name, the beautiful daughter of a priest, whom he raised to the high rank of the supreme pontificate. He sent his two sons, by the first Mariamne, to be educated at Rome, and so ingratiated himself with Augustus and his ministers, that he was appointed imperial procurator for Syria. To acquire popularity among the Jews, and to exhibit an attachment to their religion, he undertook the vast enterprise of rebuilding the temple of Jerusalem, which he finished in a noble style of magnificence in about a year and a half. During the progress of this work he visited Rome, and brought back his sons, who had attained to man's estate. These at length conspired against their father's person and