CHAPTER XII.

REIGN OF HEROD THE GREAT.

The Fatal Pond—Joseph’s Secret—Death of Hyrcanus—Fate of Mariamne, her Mother, and her Sons.

And now, for the first time, there reigned in Judea a king who was not of the race of Jacob—a king who had been placed on the throne by a foreign power, and who was chiefly maintained there by foreign influence.

As the cruel and unscrupulous character of their ruler developed itself, the Jews had reason to feel their degradation more deeply, and to long more earnestly for the time, now at hand, when the Deliverer should appear in Zion.

We have seen that Herod had united himself in marriage with Mariamne, the grand-daughter of Hyrcanus, a princess who, in the graces of her person, is said to have excelled all the women of her time, and whose spirit was equal to her beauty. She possessed great influence with Herod, who loved her as ardently as one of his hard and selfish nature could love. Mariamne, and her mother Alexandra, the daughter of Hyrcanus, naturally desired to see Aristobulus, the brother of the one and son of the other, elevated to the high priesthood. The youth, who was only seventeen, was entitled by his birth to the office; and the princesses so earnestly advocated his claims, that Herod deposed the high priest whom he himself had set up, and made Aristobulus high priest in his place.

But no sooner had the tyrant raised the Asmonean prince, than he began to find in him an object of jealousy and fear. Nature had endowed the youthful pontiff, like his sister, with dignity and grace, and the power of winning to himself the warm affections of the people. Herod knew that, in the opinion of many of the Jews, he who bore the priestly office was also entitled to the kingly, and the tyrant resolved to destroy one who might become a dangerous rival to himself. The art with which he accomplished this villainous design makes its atrocity yet darker.

Aristobulus, unsuspicious of treachery, accompanied his brother-in-law, Herod, to a banquet prepared at Jericho. After the feast was concluded, the young high priest was persuaded to join a party in bathing. He entered the pond, which the tyrant had resolved that he never should quit alive. Under pretence of sportive play, attendants, suborned by Herod, held the struggling, gasping youth beneath the water till life was extinct, and then pretended that his death had been occasioned by an unfortunate accident.

Bitter were the lamentations over the fair young prince, and none appeared to mourn his untimely fate more deeply than Herod. Splendid was the funeral which he prepared for his victim; but his hypocrisy blinded no one, and Alexandra, the bereaved mother, silently, in the depths of her bleeding heart, nourished thoughts of revenge.

If Mariamne had ever regarded her husband with feelings of affection, the murder of her innocent brother must have changed them to feelings of horror. For such Herod gave his young wife yet greater cause. On his departure from Judea, 34 B.C., the king left the administration of government and the care of his family to his uncle Joseph. Selfish even in his love, unable to endure the idea that his beautiful queen should ever survive him to be loved by another, Herod charged Joseph, should he himself be cut off on his journey, to put Mariamne to death.

During Herod’s absence Joseph frequently visited the queen, and at these visits would dilate upon the love borne to her by her royal husband. At one time, with marvellous indiscretion, he let out the fatal secret of the command which he had received from the king, telling her that so dear was she to Herod, that as he could not live without her, so he was resolved that death should not part them. The queen could not readily forget or forgive such a proof of a husband’s affection.

Herod having advanced so far on his path of guilt, waded yet deeper and deeper in crime. The aged Hyrcanus was now living quietly and honourably at Seleucia. The Jews beyond the Euphrates respected him as their king and high priest, notwithstanding the cruel measure which his nephew had taken to incapacitate him from holding the latter office. Hyrcanus had been the friend of Herod’s father, Antipater; he had been the benefactor of Herod himself, and had bestowed his own grand-daughter upon him. But Hyrcanus was a descendant of Asmoneus; he had once sat upon the throne of Judea; and, notwithstanding his age and unambitious temper, might possibly ascend it again. This was sufficient to seal his doom. Neither gratitude, the social tie, nor respect for his gray hairs, could win mercy for the venerable prince. Herod enticed Hyrcanus to Jerusalem; falsely accused him of conspiring against him; and under this pretence took the life of his benefactor, after he had passed the eightieth year of his age.

Mariamne now regarded with ill-concealed aversion him who had caused the death of her nearest relations, and who had meditated her own. The contempt in which the high-born Jewess held the family of the Idumean drew upon her the bitter hatred of his mother Cyprus, and his sister Salome; and they did all in their power to induce Herod to destroy his beautiful wife. The Asmonean princess hung but by a thread over the gulf into which so many of her race had been plunged; that thread was the passionate love of a capricious tyrant; and it was at length snapped asunder by her own unguarded expression of the just indignation which boiled in her breast. Bitterly Mariamne reproached the murderer, who was unworthy the name of her husband, and taunted him with the command which he had secretly given for her death in the event of his own.

Herod was stung to rage and fury, his love was changed for the time into hate, and the wicked Salome took advantage of his anger to ruin the woman whom she detested. Mariamne was falsely accused of a design to poison her husband, the father of her children. The fair young queen was brought to trial for her life; and her judges, suborned by her foes, sentenced her to be put to death.

Fearful was the struggle in the mind of Herod between his passionate love for Mariamne, and the fierce anger which possessed his soul. But Cyprus and Salome, like tempting fiends, urged him forward on his path of blood. They suggested that, if the Asmonean princess were spared, the people might rise in her behalf; and the miserable Herod was at length induced to order the execution of the fatal sentence.

The spirit of the descendant of the heroic Mattathias sustained her to the last. The queen of Judea with calm courage saw the end approaching of a life which had been crowded with so many trials; though she must have sighed at the thought of her two young sons, left under the guidance of a father who was the destroyer of their mother. As, with a firm step and an unblanched cheek, the queen proceeded to the place of execution, her bitter cup was yet further imbittered by the unnatural conduct of Alexandra, her own mother. This unprincipled woman, dreading that she herself might become the next victim of the murderer of her son and her daughter, thought to avert Herod’s wrath by loading the queen with cruel reproaches. Mariamne bore this last trial in dignified silence, and passed on to her death great, firm, and fearless to the end, 28 B.C.

Herod’s rage being quenched in the blood of his innocent wife, all his affection towards her revived. Half maddened by remorse and despair, he had no rest by day or by night. The remembrance of Mariamne haunted him where-ever he went, and in transports of grief he called aloud upon the name of her whom his blind fury had destroyed. A grievous pestilence raged at this time in the land, which carried off great numbers of the people, and which was regarded as the just retribution of Heaven for the guiltless blood of the queen.

The health of Herod gave way under the pressure of his misery. While he lay sick, prostrated both in body and mind, Alexandra, seizing the favourable moment, made a plot which, if successful, would have placed in her hands both power and the means of vengeance. Her design was discovered and frustrated, and the execution of the mother soon followed that of her unfortunate daughter.

Herod had now become the object of the just detestation of the people. He endeavoured to soften their resentment for his crimes, and perhaps to quiet his own tortured conscience, by expending immense sums upon the temple at Jerusalem. For many years he employed eighteen thousand workmen upon the building. The outside was adorned profusely with gold, and the pinnacles, glittering in the sun, dazzled the eyes of admiring beholders.

But that the miserable Herod had _not_ brought to God the offering of a broken and contrite heart, more precious than all the world’s vain treasures—that his remorse was _not_ repentance, was proved by his subsequent conduct.

The blood of Asmoneus still flowed in the veins of two young princes—Aristobulus and Alexander, the sons of Mariamne; and though these princes were his own children, Herod regarded them with jealous fears. They might one day assert the rights of their birth—one day avenge their murdered mother.

The young men were brought up at Rome, where they had too unguardedly expressed their natural feelings in regard to the fate of the queen. Again Salome acted her fiendish part of stirring up her brother to crime. Herod’s mind was filled with jealousy and suspicion. To make discovery of intended treason, the confidants of the unhappy princes were stretched upon the rack, and the intolerable torment forcing from some of them false confessions, Alexander was loaded with chains, and thrown into prison by his father.

The position of the princes excited sympathy. The good offices of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, produced a temporary reconciliation between Herod and his sons. But the breach was not in reality healed. In 6 B.C., the unnatural Herod wrote to Augustus, then emperor of Rome, to obtain the monarch’s consent to his putting his own offspring to death. Augustus had already repeatedly interposed between the tyrant and his victims, but he now left the unfortunate sons of Mariamne to the mercy of their father. The young men were brought to trial, as their beautiful mother had been before them; and the result was in both cases the same. Sentence of death was pronounced against the princes, and they were both strangled by their father’s command.

It is fearful to contemplate the state of Judea under the rule of this bloody tyrant. At the commencement of his reign Herod had given an earnest of his cruelty, by slaying all but two of the members of the great Jewish council of the Sanhedrim. Whoever opposed, or seemed to oppose, his power, was ruthlessly put to death. While Herod sought to spread his fame by the magnificence of the buildings which he raised, the people groaned under oppressive taxes. Bands of robbers ravaged the land, and were with difficulty put down by the strong hand of power. While crime stalked wolf-like through the palace, in serpent form it coiled even within the sacred precincts of the temple. Religion itself was made a mask for covetousness and pride. Different sects disputed together. The Pharisees, while scrupulously observing every outward ceremonial of the law, corrupted the pure fount of Truth by mixing with it the vain traditions of men. The Sadducees, with bold infidelity, rejected Heaven-taught doctrines, and plunged into evil excesses, unrestrained by the dread of a judgment to come. It might seem that the chosen, much-favoured nation, so often rebelling—repenting—being chastened and forgiven—had at length filled up the cup of her transgressions, and that the Divine vengeance, like a looming cloud, was about to burst in full fury upon guilty Jerusalem.

CONTEMPORANEOUS EVENTS 38-1 B.C. B.C. Battle of Actium 31 Rome became an empire 27