ern fashion of philanthropy) annexed to them parks and gardens for public recreation. With a toleration which seems beyond his time, but which kindles an admiration even in the Jewish historian, he repaired the Temple of Apollo at Rhodes, and settled a permanent endowment on the games of Olympia, the chief surviving relic of Grecian grandeur, which he had visited on his way to Rome. This was the man who now stepped into the foremost place of the Jewish history. It might have seemed as if the cry of Esau were to be again repeated: "Hast thou but one blessing? Bless me, even me "also, O my father." A chief of such largeness of mind, such generosity of disposition, such power of command, was well suited to take the lead in this distracted nation. Viewed as we now view him, through the blood-stained atmosphere of his later life, even the dubious eulogies of Josephus are difficult to understand. But viewed in the light of the nobleness of his early youth, and through the magnificence of his public works, it was natural that as in the case of our own Henry VIII.— the judgment of his contemporaries should have differed from that of posterity, that he should have been invested with something of a sacred character, as a dreamer of prophetic dreams, a special favorite of Divine Providence,1 and that a large party in the community should have borne his name as their most cherished badge, and regarded him as the nearest likeness which that age afforded to the Anointed Prince2 or Priest of the house of David, who had been expected by the earlier Prophets. The first scene on which Herod appears is full of in 1 Josephus, Ant., xiv. 15, 12, 13. Westcott on the Herodians, Dict. of ploits in struction. Boy as he was, his father had appointed him to take charge of Galilee; which partly His exfrom its "border" character, whence it derived Galilee. its name, partly from the physical peculiarities of its deeply-sunken lake, wild glens, and cavernous hills, had become the refuge of the high-spirited insurgents, who in semi-civilized countries insensibly acquire both the reputation and the character of bandits- the Highlands, the Asturias, the Abruzzi of Palestine. The young "Lord of the Marches," fired with the same spirit, partly politic and partly philanthropic, which had conferred such glory on Pompey and Augustus in their repression of the pirates of the Mediterranean and the brigands of Italy, determined to crush those lawless robbers of his own country. In Syria his fame rose to the highest pitch. In villages on the Lebanon his name was the burden of popular ballads, as their Heaven-sent deliverer from the incursions of the Galilean Highlanders. But in Judæa these acts of summary justice wore another aspect. The chief of the robber band, Hezekiah, was, probably, in the eyes of the residents at Jerusalem - perhaps, was in reality—the patriot, the Tell of his time, as he certainly was the father of a gallant family of sons, who were to play a like part hereafter. 1 Jerusalem was filled with the echoes of these Galilean exploits. On the one hand, the messen- B. C. 47. gers of Herod's victories vied with each other His trial in1 their reports, and in awakening the public apprehension of his possible designs on the monarchy. On the other hand, the mothers of the victims of his zeal hurried up to the capital, and every time that the Priest-King Hyrcanus appeared in the Temple Court 1 Josephus, B. J., i. 10, 6. beset him with entreaties not to allow the murder of their children untried and unconvicted to pass unchallenged. Reluctantly the feeble Prince summoned the son of his patron to appear before the Council of the Sanhedrin, which now for the first time appears in Jewish history. It sat, probably, now, as afterwards, in the Hall of Gazith, or Squares, so called from the hewn, square stones of its pavement. The royal Pontiff was present, and the chief teachers of the period. The legendary account of the scene, although disguised under wrong names and dates, is one of the very few notices which the Talmudic traditions take of the eventful course of Herod's life. "The slave of the 66 2 king of Judah" said the Rabbinical tale, "had com"mitted a murder." The Sanhedrin summoned the King to answer for the crimes of his slave. "If the 66 ox gore any one, ," said the interpreters of the law to the King," the owner of the ox shall be responsible "for the ox." The King seated himself before them. "Rise," said the Judge. "Thou standest5 not before 66 us, but before Him who commanded and the world "was created." The King appealed from the Judge to his colleagues. The Judge turned to the right hand and to the left, and his colleagues were silent. Then said the Judge: "You are súnk in your own thoughts. "God, who knows your thoughts, will punish you for your timidity." The Angel Gabriel smote them and they died. 66 It is instructive to turn to the actual scene of which this is the distorted version. It was indeed a splendid 19. 1 See Lecture XLVIII. 2 Mishna, Yoma, 25; Sanhedrin, 8 Derenbourg, 147. The king in this story is made Jannæus, and the fearless judge Simon the son of Shetach. 4 Ex. xxi. 28. 5 Deut. xix. 17. apparition, but not of the Angel Gabriel, that struck the wise Councillors dumb. When Herod was summoned before them for the murder of the Galileans, instead of a solitary suppliant, clothed in black, with his hair combed down,1 and his manner submissive, such as they expected to see, there came a superb youth, in royal purple, his curls dressed out in the very height of aristocratic fashion, surrounded by a guard of soldiers, and holding in his hand the commendatory letters of Sextus Cæsar, the Governor of Syria, the cousin of the great Julius. The two chiefs of the Sanhedrin at that juncture were Abtalion 2 and Shemaiah. It was Abtalion, doubtless, who counselled silence. His maxim had always been: "Be circumspect in your "words." But Shemaiah rose in his place and warned them that to overlook such a defiance of the law would be to insure their own ruin. For a moment they wavered. But, warned by Hyrcanus, Herod escaped, and years afterwards lived to prove the truth of Shemaiah's warning, lived to sweep away the vacillating Council, though at the same time rewarding the prudence of Abtalion, if not the courage of Shemaiah. The story well illustrates the waning of the independence of the nation before the rise of the new dynasty, backed as it was by all the power of Rome. It was to Herod that the sceptre was destined to pass. Antipater, his father, indeed, long held Hyrcanus in his grasp. But he at last fell a victim to the Death of struggles of his puppet to escape from him, B. C. 43. Antipater. Aristobulus. and the two brothers Phasael and Herod were left to maintain their own cause. At once Herod en- Contest with deavored to spring into his father's place by a B. c. 42. stroke, which, but for the jealousies of his own house* Derenbourg, 117, 148. 1 Josephus, Ant., xiv. 9, 3–5. hold, would have probably been crowned with complete success. He had already in his early years married an Idumæan wife, Doris, by whom he had a son, whom he named after his father Antipater—a child now, but destined to grow up into the evil genius of his house. He now determined on a higher alliance. The beautiful and high-spirited Mariamne united in herself the1 claims of both the rival Asmonean princes. She was the granddaughter alike of Hyrcanus and of Aristobulus. From this time Hyrcanus became the fast friend of Herod, crowned with garlands whenever he appeared, pleading his cause before the Roman Triumvir. Aristobulus, however, had left behind him not only Mariamne, but a passionate and ambitious son, Antigonus, who could not see without a struggle the kingdom pass away even to his own sister's husband. There was one foreign ally and one only whom he could invoke against the great Republic of the West. It was the rising kingdom of the East- the Parthian monarchy, which offered to play the same part for Judæa against Rome that Egypt had formerly played against Assyria. There seemed to be almost a natural affinity between them from the fresh recollection of the campaign of Crassus. Jerusalem still suffered under the B. C. 54. loss of its accumulated treasures, which the rapacious Roman, in spite of the most solemn adjurations, had carried off from its Temple. Parthia still rejoiced in the triumph which its armies had won over The Parthi- his scattered host on the plains of Haran, the ancient cradle of the Jewish race. By force Crassus. ans. B. C. 40. 1 Josephus, Ant., xiv. 12, 2. 8 Josephus, Ant., xiv. 7, 1, 2; B. J., 2 Josephus, Ant., xiv. 12, 2; 13, 1. i. 8, 8. |