236 B. S man could be so, since from a private man he obtained a kingdom, and kept it ment. 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 governAfter 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 which came his guards, and the regiment of Thracians, the Germans also, and Galls, 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 freedmen followed with sweet spices in their hands: and the body was carried two hundred furlongs to Hero dium, where he had given order to be buried. And this shall suffice for the con clusion of the life of Herod. C BOOK IL CONTAINING THE INTERVAL OF SIXTY-NINE YEARS. FROM THE DEATH OF HEROD TILL VESPASIAN WAS SENT TU CHAP. I. Archelaus makes a Funeral Feast for the People on 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. I. 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 holy temple, where the people ae costed him with various acclamations. He also spake 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 nim, as if he were 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 his testament, confirms 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 who desired innovations came in crowds towards the evening, and began then to mourn on their own ac. count, 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 Here Dean Aldrich's note on this place." The law, or custom of the Jews," says he, "requires even days mourning for the dead, Antiq. B. xvii. ch. viii. sect. 4. Whence the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus, ch. xxii. 12, assigns seven days as the proper time of mourning for the dead, and ch. 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 μxxi. 6; Deut. xxvi. 14; Josephus, Of the War, B. iii. ch, ix. sect. 5 " 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 which 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 betook 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 a 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's heralds, who commanded every one to retire to their own homes, whither they all went, and left the festival. CHAP. II. Archelaus goes to Rome with a great Number of his Kindred. He is there ac. cused before Cæsar by Antipater; but is superior to his Accusers in Judg. ment, by the Means of that Defence which Nicolaus made for him. § 1. ARCHELAUS went down now to the seaside, 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 out 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 or der 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 hither, 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 Cæsarea; 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 so sift out the accounts of the money, and to take pos session 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 the king, was valid before the latter testament. Salome had also promised to assist him, as had many of Archelaus's 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 out in him, he having been one of his most honoured friends. However, Antiras depended chiefly upon Irenæus, 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 all Archelaus's 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 asisstance to the same purpose, by the let. ters he sent, wherein he accused Archelaus before Cæsar, and highly commendad Antipas. Salome also, and those with her, put the crimes which they accus ed Archelaus of in order, and put him under Cæsar's hands: and after they had Jone that, Archelaus wrote down the reasons of his claim, and by Ptolemy sent n 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 consider rd of the great burden of the kingdom, and largeness of the revenues, and withal the number of the children Herod had left behind him, and had, moreover, read the letters he had received from Varus and Sabinus on this occasion, he assem. bled the 'ncipal 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 deeds 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 staid 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 things but of words. He also reproached him farther, 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 disturbances among the multitude came, while they had on indignation thereat. And, indeed, the purport of his whole discourse was to aggravate Archelaus's crime in slaying such a multitude about the temple, which multitude came to the festival, but were barbarously 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, that should come upon them [suddenly,] before it was de nounced, 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 obtain. ed the government from Cæsar, who hath slain so many before he hath obtained it?" 6. When Antipater had spoken largely to this purpose, and had produced a great number of Archelaus's kindred as witnesses to prove every part of the accusation, he ended his discourse. Then stood up Nicolaus to plead for Archelaus. He alleged, that "the slaughter in the temple could not be avoided: that those that were slain were become enemies not to Archelaus's kingdom only, but Cæsar, who was to determine about him. He also demonstrated, that Archelaus's accusers had advised him to perpetrate other things, of which he might have been accused. But he insisted that the latter testament should, for this reason above all others, be esteemed valid, because Herod had therein appointed Cæsar to be the person who should confirm the succession; for he who showed such prudence as to recede from his own power, and yield it up to the lord of the world, cannot be supposed mistaken in his judgment about him that was to be his heir; and he that so well knew whom to choose for arbitrator of the succession, could not be unacquainted with him whom he chose for his successor." 7. When Nicolaus had gone through all he had to say, Archelaus came and fell down before Cæsar's knees, without any noise: Upon which he raised him up, after a very obliging manner, and declared, that truly he was worthy to suc ceed his father. However, he still made no firm determination in his case; but when he had dismissed those assessors that had been with him that day, he deli. berated by himself about the allegations which he had heard, whether it were fit to constitute any of those named in the testaments, for Herod's successor, or whether the government should be parted among all his posterity, and this be cause of the number of those that seemed to stand in need of support therefrom. CHAP. III. The Jews fight a great Battle with Sabinus's Soldiers, and a great Destruction is made at Jerusalem. § 1. Now before Cæsar had determined any thing about these affairs, Malthace, Archelaus's mother, fell sick and died. Letters also were brought out of Syria from Varus about a revolt of the Jews. This was foreseen by Varus, who, accordingly, after Archelaus was sailed, went up to Jerusalem to restrain the promoters of the sedition, since it was manifest that the nation would not be at rest; so he left one of those legions which he brought with him out of Syria in the city, and went himself to Antioch. But Sabinus came after he was gone, and gave them an occasion of making innovations; for he compelled the keepers of the citadels to deliver them up to him, and made a bitter search after the king's mo ney, as depending not only on the soldiers which were left by Varus, but on the multitude of his own servants, all which he armed, and used as the instruments of his covetousness. Now when that feast which was observed after seven weeks, |