sister Salome, and her husband Alexas, and made this speech to them: "I know well enough that the Jews will keep a festival upon my death; however, it is in my power to be mourned for on other accounts, and to have a splendid funeral, if you will be but subservient to my commands. Do you but take care to send soldiers to encompass these men that are now in custody, and slay them immediately upon my death, and then all Judea, and every family of them, will weep at it, whether they will or no."

7. These were the commands he gave them; when there came letters from his ambassadors at Rome, whereby information was given that Acme was put to death at Cæsar's command, and that Antipater was condemned to die however, they wrote withal, that if Herod had a mind rather to banish him, Cæsar had permitted him so to do. So he for a little while revived, and had a desire to live; but presently after he was overborne by his pains, and was disordered by want of food, and by a convulsive cough, and endeavoured to prevent a natural death; so he took an apple and asked for a knife, for he used to pare apples and eat them; he then looked round about to see that there was nobody to hinder him, and lifted up his right hand as if he would stab himself; but Achiabus, his first cousin, came running to him, and held his hand, and hindered him from so doing; on which occasion a very great lamentation was made in the palace, as if the king was expiring. As soon as ever Antipater heard that, he took courage, and with joy in his looks, besought his keepers, for a sum of money, to loose him and let him go; but the principal keeper of the prison did not only obstruct him in that his intention, but ran and told the king what his design was; hereupon the king cried out louder than his distemper would well bear, and immediately sent some of his guards and slew Antipater; he also gave order to have him buried at Hyrcanium, and altered his testament again, and therein made Archelaus, his eldest son, and the brother of Antipas, his successor, and made Antipas tetrarch.

8. So Herod having survived the slaughter of his son five days, died, having reigned thirty-four years since he had caused Antigonus to be slain, and obtained his kingdom; but thirty-seven years since he had been made king by the Romans. Now, as for his fortune, it was prosperous in all other respects, if ever any other man could be so, since, from a private man he obtained the kingdom, and kept it so long, and left it to his own sons; but still, in his domestic affairs, he was a most unfortunate man. Now before the soldiers knew of his death, Salome and her husband came out and dismissed those that were in bonds, whom the king had commanded to be slain, and told them that he had altered his mind, and would have every one of them sent to their own homes. When these men were gone, Salome told the soldiers [the king was dead,] and got them and the rest of the multitude together at an assembly, in the amphitheatre in Jericho, where Ptolemy, who was intrusted by the king with his signet-ring, came before them, and spoke of the happiness the king had attained, and comforted the multitude, and read the epistle which had been left for the soldiers, wherein he earnestly exhorted them to bear good will to his successor; and after he had read the epistle, he opened and read his testament, wherein Philip was to inherit Trachonitis, and the neighbouring countries, and Antipas was to be tetrarch, as we said before, and Archelaus was made king. He had also been commanded to carry Herod's ring to Cæsar, and the settlements he had made sealed up, because Cæsar was to be lord of all the settlements he had made, and was to confirm his testament; and

he ordered that the dispositions he had made were to be kept as they were in his former testament.

9. So there was an acclamation made to Archelaus, to congratulate him upon his advancement, and the soldiers, with the multitude, went round about in troops, and promised him their good-will, and besides, prayed God to bless his government. After this they betook themselves to prepare for the king's funeral; and Archelaus omitted nothing of magnificence therein, but brought out all the royal ornaments to augment the pomp of the deceased. There was a bier all of gold, embroidered with precious stones, and a purple bed of various contexture, with the dead body upon it, covered with purple; and a diadem was put upon his head, and a crown of gold above it, and a sceptre in his right hand; and near to the bier were Herod's sons, and a multitude of his kindred; next to whom came his guards and the regiments of Thracians, the Germans, also, and Gauls, all accoutred as if they were going to war; but the rest of the army went foremost, armed, and following their captains and officers in a regular manner; after whom five hundred of his domestic servants and freed-men followed with sweet spices in their hands: and the body was carried two hundred furlongs to Herodium, where he had given orders to be buried. And this shall suffice for the conclusion of the life of Herod.

BOOK II.

CONTAINING THE INTERVAL OF SIXTY-NINE

YEARS.FROM THE

DEATH

OF HEROD TILL VESPASIAN WAS SENT TO SUBDUE THE JEWS BY NERO.

CHAP. I.

Archelaus makes a funeral Feast for the People, on the account of Herod. After which a great Tumult is raised by the Multitude, and he sends the Soldiers out upon them, who destroy about three Thousand of them.

1. Now the necessity which Archelaus was under of taking a journey to Rome was the occasion of new disturbances; for when he had mourned for his father seven days,* and had given a very expensive funeral feast to the multitude, (which custom is the occasion of poverty to many of the Jews, because they are forced to feast the multitude; for if any one omits it, he is not esteemed a holy person,) he put on a white garment, and went up to the temple, where the people accosted him with various acclamations. He also spoke kindly to the multitude from an elevated seat, and a throne of gold, and returned them thanks for the zeal they had shown about his father's funeral, and the submission they had made to him, as if he were

* Hear Dean Aldrich's note on this place: "The law or custom of the Jews," says he, "requires seven days' mourning for the dead, Antiq. b. xvii. chap. viii. § 4. Whence the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus, chap. xxii. 12. assigns seven days as the proper time of mourning for the dead, and chap. xxxviii. 17. enjoins men to mourn for the dead, that they may not be evil spoken of; for, as Josephus says presently, if any one omits this mourning (funeral feast) he is not esteemed a holy person. Now it is certain that such a seven days' mourning has been customary from times of the greatest antiquity, Gen. 1. 10. Funeral feasts are also mentioned as of considerable antiquity, Ezek. xxiv. 17. Jer. xvi. 7. Prov. xxxi. 6. Deut. xxvi. 14. Josephus, of the Wars, b. iii. chap. ix. § 5."

already settled in the kingdom; but he told them withal, that "he would not at present take upon him either the authority of a king, or the names thereto belonging, until Cæsar, who is made lord of this whole affair by the testament, confirm the succession; for that when the soldiers would have set the diadem on his head at Jericho, he would not accept of it; but that he would make abundant requitals, not to the soldiers only, but to the people, for their alacrity and good-will to him, when the superior lords [the Romans] should have given him a complete title to the kingdom; for that it should be his study to appear in all things better than his father."

2. Upon this the multitude were pleased, and presently made a trial of what he intended, by asking great things of him; for some made a clamour that he would ease them in their taxes; others, that he would take off the duties upon commodities; and some, that he would loose those that were in prison; in all which cases he answered readily to their satisfaction, in order to get the good-will of the multitude; after which he offered [the proper] sacrifices, and feasted with his friends. And here it was that a great many of those that desired innovations, came in crowds towards the evening, and began then to mourn on their own account, when the public mourning for the king was over. These lamented those that were put to death by Herod, because they had cut down the golden eagle that had been over the gate of the temple. Nor was this mourning of a private nature, but the lamentations were very great, the mourning solemn, and the weeping such as was loudly heard all over the city, as being for those men who had perished for the laws of their country, and for the temple. They cried out, that a punishment ought to be inflicted for these men upon those that were honoured by Herod; and that, in the first place, the man whom he had made high priest should be deprived, and that it was fit to choose a person of greater piety and purity than he was.

3. At these clamours Archelaus was provoked; but restrained himself from taking vengeance on the authors, on account of the haste he was in of going to Rome, as fearing, lest, upon his making war on the multitude, such an action might detain him at home. Accordingly, he made trial to quiet the innovators by persuasion rather than by force, and sent his general in a private way to them, and by him exhorted them to be quiet. But the seditious threw stones at him, and drove him away, as he came into the temple, and before he could say any thing to them. The like treatment they showed to others, who came to them after him, many of whom were sent by Archelaus, in order to reduce them to sobriety, and these answered still on all occasions after a passionate manner; and it openly appeared that they would not be quiet, if their numbers were but considerable. And indeed at the feast of unleavened bread, which was now at hand, and is by the Jews called the passover, and used to be celebrated with a great number of sacrifices, an innumerable multitude of the people came out of the country to worship: some of these stood in the temple bewailing the Rabbins [that had been put to death,] and procured their sustenance by begging, in order to support their sedition. At this Archelaus was affrighted, and privately sent a tribune, with his cohort of soldiers, upon them, before the disease should spread over the whole multitude, and gave orders that they should constrain those that began the tumult, by force, to be quiet. At these the whole multitude were irritated, and threw stones at many of the soldiers, and killed them; but the tribune fled away wounded, and had much ado to escape so. After which they be

took themselves to their sacrifices, as if they had done no mischief; nor did it appear to Archelaus that the multitude could be restrained without bloodshed; so he sent his whole army upon them, the footmen in great multitudes, by the way of the city, and the horsemen by the way of the plain, who, falling upon them on the sudden, as they were offering their sacrifices, destroyed about three thousand of them; but the rest of the multitude were dispersed upon the adjoining mountains; these were followed by Archelaus' heralds, who commanded every one to retire to their own homes, whither they all went, and left the festival.

CHAPTER II.

Archelaus goes to Rome with a great Number of his Kindred. He is there accused before Cæsar by Antipater; but is superior to his Accusers in judgment, by the means of that defence which Nicolaus made for him.

§ 1. ARCHELAUS went down to the sea-side, with his mother and his friends, Poplas, and Ptolemy, and Nicolaus, and left behind him Philip, to be his steward in the palace, and to take care of his domestic affairs. Salome went also along with him with her sons, as did also the king's brethren and sons-in-law. These, in appearance, went to give him all the assistance they were able, in order to secure his succession, but in reality to accuse him for his breach of the laws, by what he had done at the temple.

2. But as they were come to Cæsarea, Sabinus, the procurator of Syria, met them; he was going up to Judea, to secure Herod's effects: but Varus, [president of Syria,] who was come thither, restrained him from going any farther. This Varus, Archelaus had sent for, by the earnest entreaty of Ptolemy. At this time indeed, Sabinus, to gratify Varus, neither went to the citadels, nor did he shut up the treasuries where his father's money was laid up, but promised that he would lie still, until Cæsar should have taken cognizance of the affair. So he abode at Cesarea; but as soon as those that were his hinderance were gone, when Varus was gone to Antioch, and Archelaus was sailed to Rome, he immediately went on to Jerusalem, and seized upon the palace. And when he had called for the governors of the citadels, and the stewards [of the king's private affairs,] he tried to sift out the accounts of the money, and so take possession of the citadels. But the governors of those citadels were not unmindful of the commands laid upon them by Archelaus, and continued to guard them, and said, the custody of them rather belonged to Cæsar than to Archelaus.

3. In the mean time Antipas went also to Rome, to strive for the kingdom, and to insist that the former testament, wherein he was named to be king, was valid before the latter testament. Salome had also promised to assist him, as had many of Archelaus' kindred, who sailed along with Archelaus himself also. He also carried along with him his mother, and Ptolemy the brother of Nicolaus, who seemed one of great weight, on account of the great trust Herod put in him, he having been one of his most honoured friends. However, Antipas depended chiefly upon Ireneus, the orator, upon whose authority he had rejected such as advised him to yield to Archelaus, because he was his elder brother, and because the second testament gave the kingdom to him. The inclinations also of Archelaus' kindred, who hated him, were removed to Antipas, when they came to Rome, although in the first place every one rather desired to live under their own laws, [without a king,] and to be under a Roman governor;

but if they should fail in that point, these desired that Antipas might be their king.

4. Sabinus did also afford these his assistance to the same purpose, by the letters he sent, wherein he accused Archelaus before Cæsar, and highly commended Antipas. Salome also, and those with her, put the crimes which they accused Archelaus of in order, and put them into Cæsar's hands, and after they had done that, Archelaus wrote down the reasons of his claim, and, by Ptolemy, sent in his father's ring, and his father's accounts. And when Cæsar had maturely weighed by himself what both had to allege for themselves, as also had considered of the great burden of the kingdom, and largeness of the revenues, and withal the number of children Herod had left behind him, and had moreover read the letters he had received from Varus and Sabinus on this occasion, he assembled the principal persons among the Romans together, (in which assembly Caius, the son of Agrippa, and his daughter Julias, but by himself adopted for his own son, sat in the first seat,) and gave the pleaders leave to speak.

5. Then stood up Salome's son, Antipater, (who of all Archelaus's antagonists was the shrewdest pleader,) and accused him in the following speech: "That Archelaus did in words contend for the kingdom, but that in deed he had long exercised royal authority, and so did but insult Cæsar in desiring to be now heard on that account; since he had not stayed for his determination about the succession, and since he had suborned certain persons, after Herod's death, to move for putting the diadem upon his head; since he had set himself down in the throne, and given answers as a king, and altered the disposition of the army, and granted to some higher dignities that he had also complied in all things with the people in the requests they had made to him as to their king, and had also dismissed those that had been put into bonds by his father, for most important reasons. Now, after all this, he desires the shadow of that royal authority, whose substance he had already seized to himself, and so hath made Cæsar lord. not of all things, but of words. He also reproached him further, that his mourning for his father was only pretended, while he put on a sad countenance in the day-time, but drank to great excess in the night, from which behaviour, he said, the late disturbance among the multitude came, while they had an indignation thereat. And indeed the purport of this whole discourse was to aggravate Archelaus' crime in slaying such a multitude about the temple, which multitude came to the festival, but were barbar ously slain in the midst of their own sacrifices; and he said, there was such a vast number of dead bodies heaped together in the temple, as even a foreign war, should that come upon them [suddenly,] before it was denounced, could not have heaped together. And he added, that it was the foresight his father had of that his barbarity, which made him never give him any hopes of the kingdom, but when his mind was more infirm than his body, and he was not able to reason soundly, and did not well know what was the character of that son, whom in his second testament he made his successor; and this was done by him at a time when he had no complaints to make of him whom he had named before when he was sound in body, and when his mind was free from all passion. That, however, if any one should suppose Herod's judgment, when he was sick, was superior to that at another time, yet had Archelaus forfeited his kingdom by his own behaviour, and those his actions, which were contrary to the law, and to its disadvantage. Or what sort of a king will this man be, when he hath