Herod from Hell: Confessions and Reminiscences

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Published by AuthorHouse 01/20/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2950-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2949-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2948-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013919868

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One In the Beginning

Chapter Two Ruler of Galilee

Chapter Three King of the Jews

Chapter Four Retaking Jerusalem

Chapter Five The Fall of Antony and Cleopatra

Chapter Six King of the Jews

Chapter Seven Killing My Sons

Chapter Eight My Surviving Sons

Chapter Nine Field Reports on the Messiah

Chapter Ten Antipas and the Trial of Yeshua

Chapter Eleven Yeshua’s Secret

Chapter Twelve Yeshua and His Kingdom

Chapter Thirteen Antipas and the Apostles

Chapter Fourteen Peter, Paul and the Rise of Nerone

Chapter Fifteen Nerone Becomes Emperor

Chapter Sixteen Nerone Attacks Christians

Chapter Seventeen The Christians Thrive

Chapter Eighteen The Beloved Apostle and the Last of the Herodian Line

Chapter Nineteen Deciphering Revelation

Chapter Twenty Judgment Day

Chapter Twenty One My Dynasty, Yeshua and John

Ending Acknowledgements

This book is dedicate to all my sons.

HEROD FROM HELL:

CONFESSIONS AND REMINISCENCES

May 15, 2007 (AP) The tomb of Herod the Great has been discovered in Herodium, the fortress city built by the ruler a decade before the birth of Jesus Christ. Herod, named King of the Jews by the Roman Caesars, ruled a kingdom that included modern day Israel, parts of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. It was the largest Jewish state ever assembled. Herod constructed the expansive Jewish Temple, which was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans. At the time of his death in 4 B.C., Herod was placed in an ossuary that was buried in the fortress, but his remains went undiscovered until this month.

CHAPTER ONE

IN THE BEGINNING

I , HEROD, HAVING had my soul released on the Ides of May of 2007 from the ossuary in which I was entombed, now speak to you from Hell. It happened this way. When I was buried with a glorious funeral, my enemies waited until nightfall and then moved the ossuary in which I was interred. They hid it and put a curse upon it: namely, that my soul would be entrapped in the ossuary until it was discovered. After more than two thousand years, my tomb was found in the fortress at Herodium which I built into a conical, scruffy 300 foot high hill eight miles south of Jerusalem. Because of my sins, once released from Herodium, my soul was immediately consigned to a lower chamber in Hell. However, there is no need for you to mourn for me, though I doubt many people regret my death given the publicity I was subjected to after my death by the New Testament writers.

I do not need sympathy because here in Hell I have company and the chance to catch up on all that has happened since my death. Beyond the fires and the absence of Yahweh that we endure every day, we are shaped and tortured by the unforgiven sins that marred our souls at the time of our deaths. For example, my soul is plagued with a stomach full of cramps. Cleopatra’s soul is ripe, puffy and redolent, making her look like a blistered tomato instead of the beauty she had been. Henry VIII’s soul is red and blotchy. The Renaissance monk Savonarola’s soul is streaked with the scars of his burning at the stake. The good news is that we can wear apparel to cover our corrupted souls hiding the pustules, pock marks, and scars of our sins.

My penance requires that I recount the events of my life, and that of my off spring, in an honest manner. Once I have fulfilled this autobiographical duty, I will be allowed to move up to higher levels of chambers in this inferno. To help me complete my sentence, I am allowed to consult any of my relatives and former acquaintances who are down here. And let me tell you, there are a lot of them. I can also talk to historians and philosophers from my time and after as long as I do not wander too far from my level of confinement in Hell.

The story that I will relate to you is one of the most interesting in all of history if I do say so myself. It is particularly relevant to you because the story brings together forces that affect you to this day. Let me begin by confessing that though I was dubbed King of the Jews by the Romans, I was not Jewish, I am of Nabataean Arab and Idumean descent.¹ As you shall see, this heritage led to a great deal of trouble with the Jews over whom I ruled. But my story is also of interest because I dealt with the only major imperial power in the world, Rome, and kept it at bay by cleverly befriending its major leaders, one after the other. They killed one another off with great regularity; so I had to be very adaptable as new leaders emerged. Not only did I acquire more territory and wealth than either Kings David or Solomon, I became the second wealthiest ruler in the Roman Empire and established a line of rulers that lasted to the end of the First Century A.D

Despite this dramatic history, I get short shrift in your culture. When Hollywood does mention me, it is as the man who tried to kill the infant Yeshua—the one some call Jesus—by ordering a mass slaughter of young male babies in my vicinity. (A libel I will refute later in these memoirs.) In the recent cable series on Rome, I was seen merely walking through a few scenes. I have learned from my son Herod Antipas in the chamber above me that Hollywood has done Rome big time. From the original Ben Hur through Quo Vadis to Gladiator, Hollywood has featured the Roman Empire in all of its glory, gore, and corruption. But not me and mine. And Hollywood certainly does Yeshua bar Yoseph, some call him Jesus the Christ; Yeshua is regularly visited by film makers from The Sign of the Cross to The Passion of the Christ. These cinematic fictions either portray me and my family as vicious or as fops; Antipas was particularly offended by Yeshua Christ Superstar.

My story turns the Hollywood perspective around in several ways. First, it functions as a corrective on some very inaccurate portrayals of me and my off-spring. Second, it examines the Roman rulers and your Christ and his followers through my eyes and the eyes of my successors. This is necessary because most people do not know the difference between Herod the Great—I ruled at the time of Yeshua’s birth—and my son, Herod Antipas, who ruled at the time of Yeshua’s crucifixion. Few have heard of my grandson Herod Agrippa I, though he is featured in the New Testament’s Acts of the Apostles, or his son Herod Agrippa II, who would rule for 43 years. This narrative tries to set the record straight and along the way undo some other myths.

Let me begin by talking about where I am now. Different religions have different interpretations of what and where Hell is. I can tell you now that the Jews were right. Before Yahweh created the earth, he erected Heaven on his right side and Hell on his left side. After the revolt of Satan and the dark angels, Hell was lowered into the Abyss, the deep pit, with its lake of fire at the bottom. This is the realm that Satan rules, never to see Yahweh again. (The name Yahweh is derived from the Hebrew letters YHWH, which come from JHVH for Jehovah; the Jews do not say the name of their God; however, sometimes they say Adonai, for Lord.)

To complete my assignment, I believe it will be most natural for me to examine history from the point of view of the Herodian dynasty, which the historian here tells me has not been attempted before. As I have observed, our link to the Romans was a strong one and our interaction with the teacher Yeshua was important. As I mentioned, he was born in the last year of my life and died during the reign of my son Antipas in 33 A.D. For their crimes, my sons, Antipater and Archelaus are in chamber 8, one below mine; Antipas and my grandson and great grandson Agrippa’s I and II are in chamber 6, one above mine. My sons and grandsons have helped me piece together the story of the Herodian dynasty, which runs from my birth to Agrippa II’s death.

However, there is another conundrum I wished to get out of the way before beginning my personal story. The tension among the Jews that I faced may surprise many people who are unfamiliar with Jewish governance. On one side were those who could trace their lineage back through the Old Testament using their tribal heritage. Some were Levites, some descended from Joseph, and some were members of the tribes from Esau, who had lost his birthright to his brother Jacob. The traditional Jews retained the stories of triumph and captivity; their scribes wrote them into the books of the Old Testament five hundred years before my time. After destroying Solomon’s Temple and annexing Judah, Nebuchadnezzar II took the Jews to Babylon. Seven decades later, Cyrus, the King of Persia, freed them. In gratitude, the Jews re-named him Koresh, which means savior. Ironically, the Old Testament as I came to know it would never have been written had the Jews not endured the Babylonian captivity. It gave their scribes something to do while captives; they gave the world a solidified religion with a well woven set of myths based on facts available to them that had been handed down in their oral culture.

By my time, the last century before the birth of Yeshua, many of the authentic Jews also claimed to be followers of the Maccabees who had thrown off the yoke of Greek rule and evolved into the Hasmonean dynasty, named for their founder Hashmon.² They awaited a Messiah descended from King David; that Messiah was supposed to lead them to political dominance in the region, much as David had centuries earlier. The problem with these beliefs is that I ran counter to them. Were I to take over Judea and recreate the kingdom of David, it would prove their prophets wrong. So they opposed me at every turn. This was very annoying. They could accept a Persian as their savior centuries before my time, but not accept me, an Arab Idumean. This was particularly galling to me since my father had helped keep the Romans off their backs. In their attacks on me, they often retold the story of how Jeremiah, the noisiest of their prophets, had been sent to an Idumean leader to face judgment, and therefore, Idumeans must endure the disdain of Jews through time. It is ironic that some Christians would issue the same kind of condemnation of the Jews because their leaders had requested the crucifixion of Yeshua.

On the other side of the first century B.C. divide were those who followed me, Herod. I came to power through heroic military campaigns, and with the aid of my father and allies in Rome. However, because I was not an authentic Jew, I was almost always being tested by those loyal to the Hasmonean dynasty.

That’s why the story of my dynasty often reads like a soap opera. It is a story complicated by characters who have the same names, sons being named after their fathers, daughters after their aunts, and so forth. My father was named Antipater; so following tradition, I named my first son Antipater. My sister Salome also named her son Antipater and one of my son’s wives, Herodias, named her daughter by her first husband after her aunt Salome. This younger Salome became the most infamous strip dancer in history. Despite this confusion, I will do my best in telling this story to keep the main characters straight by numbering them and referring you to the dynastic chart in the front of this book.

So to the beginning. In what is now southern Palestine, I, Herod the Great, was born in late 73 B.C. under the rule of Queen Alexandra of the Hasmonean line. My name means heroic, so from the beginning, I had a name to live up to. My father, the Idumean ruler Antipater, was always close to the Jews of nearby Judea, though he had married the Nabataean Princess Cypros, my mother. As I grew up, my father was my best mentor, but he also exposed me to Jewish scholars. I was quite familiar and comfortable with the ways of the Jews, particularly their monotheism. One of my teachers, Manaemos, after coming out of a trance predicted that I would someday become king of the Jews. Manaemos was an Essene Jew, which meant he was very strict and very puritanical. So his predictions held some weight with my father. Thus, to prepare me for my fate, I was sent to Rome for a few years to observe their republic and learn Greek, Latin, philosophy and rhetoric.

The capital of Idumea was Hebron, from which King David ruled for seven years. The tomb of the patriarchs is in a nearby cave. It houses Abraham, the forefather of the Arabs and the Jews. Through his slave Hagar, Abraham begat Ishmael, the founder of the Arab tribe after he and his mother were banished when Abraham’s wife Sarah became pregnant with Isaac. Sarah, Isaac, and Isaac’s wife Rebecca were buried in the cave with Abraham as was Isaac’s son Jacob, and his wife Leah. Abraham took a nomadic people from the land of Ur and made them into land-loving farmers and shepherds in Canaan. My father’s people, the Idumeans, descended from the Edomites and lived between the Arabs and the Jews. The Edomites had an ancient enmity with the Jews because the Edomites believed the Jews were interlopers. The Edomites had encouraged Nebuchadnezzar to invade Judea and take the Jews away to Babylon. The Edomites then hoped to take over Judea giving themselves some breathing room since they had been squeezed between the Arabs and the Jews for so long. The Jews rightly felt betrayed by these Edomites. And when they returned from their Babylonian captivity, they often fought with the Edomites and their descendants, the Idumeans. However, this is only one of the many historic reasons why the Jews held me and my family in disrepute.

The second reason stems from a ruthless king named Antiochus IV, one of the descendants of the Seleucids who were put in charge of the Middle East by Alexander the Great. Antiochus decided he wanted to take Egypt away from the dynasty that descended from Ptolemy Sotar, another general who had received a piece of the Greek empire from Alexander two hundred years earlier. On his way to the land of the Ptolemies, Antiochus came through Judea, noted the unruliness of the people, and concluded that the region must be under his complete control if he was to succeed in his march on Egypt, which he hoped to begin in 168 B.C. Foolishly, he ordered the end of the practice of Judaism. (When has any foreign nation succeeded in stamping out an indigenous religion?) He forbade the worship of God and substituted Zeus, erecting his statue in the inner area of the old Jewish Temple. The Jews were not allowed to worship any god beside Yaweh according to the Commandments handed down to Moses. So the Jews were horrified with the erection of the statue of Zeus in their temple. Things went from bad to worse when Antiochus not only ignored the Jews, but offered a pig to Zeus at the Temple thereby desecrating the altar of the Jews. These actions led to the revolt by Judah Maccabee and his followers. The Maccabees wrote and distributed the Book of Daniel during this time to strengthen the faith of the Jews in general and to urge them not to worship false gods in particular.

After four years of war, the Jews defeated King Antiochus creating a new Jewish independent state in 164 B.C., the first since before the Babylonian captivity. Mattathias ben Johanan, the first of the Jewish leaders, died shortly thereafter. He was followed by his sons Judah Maccabee, who ruled until 160 B.C. and Jonathan Apphus, who ruled to 142 B.C. and then Simon Thassi, who ruled until 134 B.C. Mattathias’ grandson, Johanan Hyrcanus I ruled from 134 to 104 B.C.; his son Aristobulus ruled for only a year when Alexander Jannaeus, another son, succeeded him.

During his reign, Hyrcanus I contributed to the bad blood between my people and the Jews by trying to convert the Idumeans to Judaism in a rather primitive way. He was not wrong to sense that the Idumeans could be converted. Like me they were ready to accept the precepts of Jewish faith, which I can recall to this day. There was one, omniscient, omnipotent, ineffable God; He was eternal; we were obligated to love Him and no other; Moses was the greatest of the prophets and brought the Ten Commandments, which we must follow as interpreted by the Pharisees; God inspired the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament; God punishes evil and rewards good; God will send a Messiah, who will resurrect the dead; only then will they gain paradise. None of this was a problem for my people. However, forcing the Idumean men to become circumcised created a great deal of bad blood, figuratively and literally. So the Idumeans came to hate the Maccabean Jews.

My grandfather tried to repair the damage with the Jews by working with Hyrcanus’ successor, Alexander Jannaeus. Alexander put my grandfather in charge of Idumea and tolerated some of our customs. That is how my family came to rule Idumea. My grandfather and then my father Antipater watched Alexander’s conquests from 103 to 76 B.C. He established something of an empire which incorporated such states as Idumea, Galilee, Moab, Samaritis and Gaza. To take Samaritis, Alexander destroyed the capital, Samaria. Like many other Hasmoneans, which the Maccabees came to call themselves, Alexander adopted the names and ways of the Greeks, which led to internal turmoil among the Jews. The traditionalists claimed that their priests descended from the priest of David and Solomon called Zadok. These people did not want to be Hellenized, that is, made into pale imitations of the Greeks. So they became Zealots, and rioted. We have used their name ever since to portray people who are pro-active, true believers; people who act with zeal. Alexander’s dictatorial ways and the stories from the past provided the folklore that strengthened the resolve of the Zealots, who went on to refuse to compromise with foreign powers and sought liberty under Yahweh. They were in their own way the first Zionist movement.

Thus, anyone who would rule the Jews faced the descendants of the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans on one side and some of the priests, mainly the Zadoks who became Pharisees, on the other. The fact is that the Pharisees had a tragic past. When they came to Alexander to protest his methods, he laughed at them and made fun of their phylacteries. When they continued to protest, he crucified as many as 800 Pharisees. As they suffocated to death on their crosses, children picked up their strewn tassels. It was a relief to the Zealots when Alexander died.

Alexander was succeeded by Queen Salome Alexandra from 78 to 69 B.C., who tried to keep the peace among all of her peoples and to make amends with the remaining Pharisees. Luckily, my father Antipater became a counselor to Alexandra, mentoring Hyrcanus II, her son, and favoring him over his brother Aristobulus II for ruler. Nevertheless, when Alexandra abdicated in 69 B.C., she split the authority between her sons in the fashion of the Old Testament. Hyrcanus was to be High Priest and Aristobulus was to be King. He became leader of the nationalist movement, while Hyrcanus led the religious movement. When Alexandra died in 67 B.C., my father encouraged his father-in-law and my grandfather, Aretas (also known as Harith) III, King of Arab Nabataea, to invade to prevent Aristobulus from seizing full power. Aristobulus would have imposed his will on Idumea, while Hyrcanus promised to form an alliance with my father to keep things the way they were in Idumea. The Hasmonean princes then fought one another for the Jewish throne.

I was only six years old when my father told me that their dispute could not have come at a worse time because it drew the attention of the Roman General and statesman Pompey. My father knew that men rose to the rank of Consul in Rome only by being elected by the Senate after having succeeded in some foreign conquest. The Senate respected conquest because it provided treasure, food, and/or slaves for the Roman Republic. To enhance their chances of leadership, generals such as Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey usually had their eyes out for a weak nation ripe for the picking. The internal dispute between the Hasmonean brothers made Judea just such a plum.

By this time, Pompey had been named Magnus Gnaeus Pompeius, meaning the great one. As a young man, he had fought for the dictator Sulla to gain his initial fame in 83 B.C. He then won victories in Sicily and Africa and paraded his prize captives through the streets of Rome in 81B.C. The African men in chains, their black skin glistening in the sun, fascinated the citizens of Rome. After Sulla retired, Pompey cooperated with the Senator Cicero to restore the rights that Sulla had stripped away. Like Cicero, Pompey rose from the ranks of the knights, the merchant class; the two became close. From his seat in the Senate, Cicero often supported Pompey’s military adventures. One of his most notable was clearing the Mediterranean Sea of pirates. It took him only three months, though he had been allotted three years to accomplish the task. Pompey’s cleansing of the sea was one of the first stories I was told when I was growing up.

Now Pompey captured Judea to keep the feuding princes of the Hasmonean line from fighting with one another. I was very excited as a young man to hear from my father that he was going off to war to fight with Pompey against the nation of Pontus, one of the strongest in the area. As part of Pompey’s grand coalition of the willing, my father helped to defeat Mithradates IV, King of Pontus, who promptly committed suicide in his mountain retreat. My father returned from the war at the side of Pompey; it was at this time that I was introduced to the great man for the first time. It was also the first of many alliances my family would form with Roman leaders.

As Pompey visited with my father in Damascus, the capital of Syria, news came that Hyrcanus and Aristobulus had broken their promises to Pompey, formed armies and met in a showdown battle near Jericho, where many of Hyrcanus’ troops, who had been supplied by King Aretas, deserted him much to my father’s dismay. Worse yet, my uncle was killed in the battle. Leaving Pompey behind, my father retreated to King Aretas’ palace in Petra with my mother, me and my siblings. Then known as the City of Ghosts, Petra had been built into sheer cliffs by my ancestors on my mother’s side. We were now the ghosts of Petra in exile. After a harrowing escape from the battle and a circuitous route, Hyrcanus joined us. His brother Aristobulus assumed the throne. In the gardens of Petra which hung from the rock cliff, I remember watching my father plot with Hyrcanus to overthrow Aristobulus.

Then good news arrived. Pompey summoned the Hasmonean princes to Damascus to order them to cease hostilities. When Aristobulus refused the invitation, Pompey sent General Scaurus into Judea to take over. We soon learned how brutal the Romans could be. On the Sabbath in a lightening attack, the Roman general seized Jerusalem and killed 12,000 Jews, many of whom leapt to their deaths from the walls of the Temple. Pompey then heard the brothers’ conflicting claims. Against the advice of my father, Pompey entered the Holy of Holies of the Temple to contemplate his decision. He thereby defiled the inner sanctum of the Temple. His action reminded the Jews of Antiochus, so the Romans became anathema to the Jews for the same reason the Greeks had.

At about this time, my father thought it important that I learn about the history of the Judean people. Once a week he would take me to the baths and teach me history to prepare me to rule. I can still see him leaning back in one of the green and black speckled granite tubs, water covering his chest. His eyes were closed, but he had a smile on his lips.

Father. His eyes popped open. It is time for my lesson.

He sat up sending a wave across the tub. Yes, yes. Of course. I was just remembering my day with Pompey the Great.

What are his plans, father?

He is going to build an Empire in which none of the citizens will pay taxes. They will have anything they desire from plump pomegranates to elegant eels. But that is the future, today, I must teach you about the Judea.

Why is that, father? I want to learn about the future of Rome.

I will tell you a secret, Herod, one not even your older brother knows.

What is it?

When he leaves, Pompey is going to make me the ruler of Judea. Some day you may succeed me. So what must you learn?

This tradition of the people, I suppose.

Yes, you suppose correctly. So let’s begin with the dispute over who had more temporal power, the King of the Jews or their High Priest.

Phasealus says that dispute has been going on forever.

Your brother is right. This division of power can be traced to Moses, the political leader of the Jews, and his brother Aaron, their High Priest. Moses clearly held sway over Aaron, having received the Ten Commandments from God. King David, who ruled from 1013 to 973 B.C., would triumph over his high priests as would his son Solomon, who reigned from 973 to 933. However, by the time of the Maccabees, the high priests had gained ascendancy mainly because their Babylonian and Greek rulers did not allow the Jews to have strong, political leaders. At first, Aristobulus re-established the earlier balance, taking some powers from his brother. However, when he took full power, the family feud weakened the Jews and made them an easy target for Pompey.

I lowered my naked, ten-year-old body further into the warm water. Herod, you are well endowed. You should be proud.

As I blushed, I couldn’t help but admire what my father had accomplished. His wife was a beautiful Arab princess, who bore him five children including Salome, my sister who inherited as much of my father’s guile as did I. However, my kind, older brother inherited none of it. After the three of us, two more brothers came along further securing my father’s dynasty. Father was saying, So now Pompey has imprisoned Aristobulus and re-established Hyrcanus, as the High Priest of the Jews under my protectorate. And let this be a lesson to you, Herod, I have decided not to keep our fortune in one place. Instead, I will loan it out to other rulers, which will endear me to them. I will also make a profit on the turnover.

Good for you, father.

Thank you. It will all be yours one day. But we’ve gotten off track. Where was I?

Pompey, you were about to talk about his goals.

Ah, yes. I need to remind you that the capture of Judea has occurred during the tenure of Cicero as consul in Rome; he has often praised Pompey’s victories and policies in speeches on the floor of the Senate. He was elected unanimously with Pompey’s backing. Cicero, who carried majorities in every one of the Roman Centuries voting on the Field of Mars in Rome, will now become our friend. But the Jews don’t like him much because he claimed that the Jews were a people who were born to be slaves. Unfortunately, his anti-Semitism is common among the Romans.

Is that why the Pharisees are condemning the dealings of Hyrcanus?

I’m afraid so, Herod. But Pompey is no one to try to resist. He easily subsumed Judea and divided it from its former provinces such as Samaritis and Galilee. He also re-created city-states in the Greek model, such as Joppa. Across the Jordan River, he placed ten cities into a league known as Deca-polis. When Pompey sent Scaurus to secure Arabia, I sent him supplies, thereby reinforcing Pompey’s favorable impression of me. That allowed me to negotiate a treaty of goodwill between the Arabs under King Aretas and Pompey.

So now Pompey is off to Rome where he will be celebrated.

Yes, I will tell you another little secret. He will marry Julius Caesar’s daughter Julia to seal an alliance with the popular general. Pompey will take many Jewish artisans to Rome and they will be placed in labor camps on the west bank of the Tiber River. He is also taking Aristobulus and all of his family, except for his son Alexander, to Rome; they will be put on display in Pompey’s triumphal march through the city’s heart. What did I tell you it was called?

Pompey’s Forum, where they found silver. Can I see it someday, father?

Very soon. It is time for you to go to Rome for a proper education.

Later my father and I would realize that leaving the young Alexander behind, even under the care of his uncle Hyrcanus was a mistake. When he came of age, Alexander escaped from Jerusalem and quickly raised an army. In no time, he had seized Jerusalem, stripped Hyrcanus of his power and imprisoned him. Once again, my father escaped with our family to Idumea to await a rescue from Rome. However, the news that arrived was hardly what my father wanted to hear: Alexander was rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem that Pompey’s troops had torn down.

General Gabinius was sent from Rome to put down the revolt. Alexander retreated to the countryside where he recruited more men and consolidated them at two fortresses, Alexandrium, the fortress north of Jericho, and Machaerus, near Moab, each of which would play important roles throughout history. When Alexander believed he had enough followers to re-take Jerusalem, he launched an assault on Jerusalem. I was sent to Petra for safekeeping, where I was even more ingrained with the Arab culture. I became an expert horseman and not a bad wrestler.

By this time, my father had befriended Gabinius. Consistently, he seemed to be able to guess who would lead the Romans and how to win his way into that man’s heart. He once told me, That is a skill you must learn, my son. The problem is that Roman leaders do not last very long. You befriend one, and very soon he is dead.

With a handsome young man named Marc Antony commanding one of his legions, Gabinius won the ultimate battle with Alexander; almost 3,000 Jewish soldiers were slain. Alexander escaped to Alexandrium. Gabinius destroyed cities and forts that harbored dissidents, including Alexandrium. However, by the time he got there, Alexander had left his fortress and melted into the desert.

Gabinius soon restored Hyrcanus to the high priesthood in Jerusalem. That led to what would prove an endless series of insurrections against Rome by those loyal to Aristobulus. The first came when Pompey and Caesar were jostling for influence. While Pompey was distracted, Aristobulus with his older son Antigonus managed to bribe their way out of prison, escape Rome and lead another revolt around 57 B.C. against Hyrcanus, my father and his Roman friends. I was 16 and in military training when the attack came. My father and Hyrcanus prepared for the worst. When Aristobulus and Antigonus were betrayed by spies and captured by Roman legions and returned to Rome, young Alexander came out of the desert hills with a rag-tag band and again attacked the Romans. He lost this battle also. My father’s position as kind of the protector of Hyrcanus and Judea finally seemed firm.

When I was seventeen, and clearly of age, I sat with my father over wine and discussed world affairs. His body was aging but his mind remained sharp. I sipped the warm, red wine, and then made a request. This family in Egypt fascinates me. Didn’t you and General Gabinius restore the Ptolemies to the throne of Egypt?

Yes, but they are a treacherous lot. Keep your eyes on the young Cleopatra.

Father, she’s only child. Four years younger than I am.

Ah, but she is the apple of her father’s eye.

So why didn’t he make her his heir?

Her oldest sister Tryphaena lusted after the throne when their father became ill. She was ten years older than Cleopatra and two years older than another sister, Berenice, who is said to have smelled of almond oil.

And Cleopatra has a younger sister, Arisnoe.

But when Cleopatra was twelve, it was Tryphaena who seized the throne causing Cleopatra and her father to flee to Rome to seek help.

As I recall, they arrived after the first Triumvirate had been formed.

My father sipped from his goblet. Pompey, Caesar and Crassus formed an uneasy alliance known as the Triumvirate, which violated Roman law and weakened the Senate. Caesar gained credibility because he had conquered Hispania, which brought gold and silver to Rome. Crassus had defeated Spartacus, the gladiator who led the slave revolt, and become wealthy. And you and I witnessed Pompey’s major triumphs here, especially against Mithradates. Thank God, I help him on that adventure. Once the Triumvirate was formed, Gabinius was able to send poor Cicero into exile for criticizing it. Caesar was given Gaul to rule and pacify, from which he would return a hero. In fact, when he was allowed his triumphal night march to celebrate the victories in Rome, he was accompanied by a thousand torches and 50 elephants into the Forum. For his part, my friend Pompey controlled Italy and Greece; Crassus was given the Middle East and told to pacify it.

Spartacus is my hero. He began his revolt in the year of my birth.

Father rested on a bench, goblet in hand. Yes, the Thracian gladiator, who took his name from his owner, began raiding slave camps in 73 B.C., and amassed an army of 120,000, plus their women and children. Most people don’t know that the movement divided. Those who left Spartacus were defeated in a major battle. However, Spartacus’ group defeated a Roman army, which put the fear of the gods into the Romans. He assured them that he meant no harm; he merely wanted to retreat into the Italian Alps into what the Roman’s called Near Gaul. Unfortunately, Spartacus was seen as an internal threat. So his make-shift army was cut off before it could reach the snow-capped mountains in the north. Spartacus marched his army all the way down the boot of Italy to its heel, where pirates had promised to pick up his people and ferry them to safe harbor. It did not happen. The Romans had bribed the pirates and they withdrew before Spartacus’ army arrived. In 71 B.C. Crassus had trapped Spartacus and a major battle ensued in which 12,000 of Spartacus’ group were killed. Crassus personally took delight in taking captives aside, putting their heads backward between his knees, and shoving his sword down their throats. The remainder of the troops were defeated when Pompey arrived from his victories here in the East to clean out Spartacus’ supporters in the north. In the south, Crassus had the surviving males crucified along every mile of the road back to Rome. Pompey was less cruel; he simply dispatched his prisoners with the sword.

But what about Cleopatra and her father?

Oh, yes, the wine has made me forgetful. Ptolemy convinced the Triumvirate to authorize General Gabinius to put Ptolemy back on the throne. So Cleopatra and her father came to Antioch. We all sailed to Alexandria, threw the usurping sister off the throne, and put Ptolemy back in charge. And that is where our story must end for tonight. I’m very sleepy.

Soon after this discussion, my father and I learned that Crassus wanted more glory to strengthen his hand with Caesar and Pompey. Crassus decided to attack the Parthians, who had won their independence from Greece around 250 B.C. Parthia sat in the mountains of Armenia but its army foraged out into the rich valleys below and into Mesopotamia. Led by Tigranes the Great, who reigned from 94-56 B.C., the Parthians had captured Cappadocia, near the center of what you now call Turkey, and supported Pontus in its wars with Rome. The Parthians adopted the Persian habit of personal refinement; they adorned their bodies with gold and silver jewelry and fine silk and linen robes. They wore tonsured mustaches and curled their hair. They adopted some of the principles of Zoroastrianism and worshiped Mithras; that is, they believed the world was divided between the forces of light and learning, and those of darkness and ignorance. Nonetheless, they were for the most part tolerant of other religions and hence open to alliances with the Jews when they felt intimidated by Rome. The death of Tigranes opened the way for a new war with Parthia on the part of Rome.

My father and I watched when Crassus stopped in Jerusalem in 54 B.C.—I was nineteen—to pillage the Temple, taking the wealth accumulated there by Hyrcanus. The Jews cursed and condemned Crassus, who needed the funds to pay mercenaries in his war with Parthia. When Crassus caught up with the Parthians, he defied the auguries and attacked them on their ground at Carrhae in 53 B.C. It was a disaster. After his legions suffered one of the worst losses in Roman history, Crassus was forced to watch as his son was beheaded. The head was the hoisted onto a pike and paraded around the battleground. Then the Parthians forced Crassus to drink molten gold. The Parthians took many of the Roman legions’ standards, a tremendous humiliation. As the next in the line of Roman command, a lean-looking general named Cassius retreated to Syria with the 10,000 or so survivors. Hearing of the defeat of Crassus, the Jews promptly declared their independence from Rome and our family retreated to Idumea once again.

In Rome, Pompey faced some challenges. Some senators did not like the fact that he had brought Cicero back from exile in 57 B.C., particularly Caesar. Others grumbled that though Pompey had been governor of Hispania, he refused to go there, ruling through surrogates. When his wife, Caesar’s daughter Julia died, he ended his alliance with Caesar. When news arrived of Crassus defeat, Caesar and Pompey began to jockey for sole leadership of Rome. Pompey won the first round by being elected consul in 52 B.C. with Cicero’s support. But Caesar’s more recent victories in Gaul impressed the public more than Pompey’s political manipulations. It is such a sin the way voters ignore history and live in the present, crisis to crisis, victory to victory.

Meanwhile, after re-grouping in Syria, Cassius was able to fend off the Parthians and make his way to Jerusalem. This arrival was not good for the Jews. Cassius easily defeated the defenders of the city and then sold thousands of Jews into slavery. He imposed new taxes to fund the rebuilding of his army. When told the Jews would starve if they were taxed any further, he replied, I am a very lean man. They could use to lose some weight themselves. Soon he received word from Rome that he was to put down an insurrection in Babylon.

However, no sooner had Cassius left Jerusalem than dark news arrived from Rome. Caesar had crossed the Rubicon River declaring war on Pompey and the Senate. When his robe touched the river, the indigo flowed from his hem and Caesar said, The die is cast.³ Sadly from our perspective and surely that of Cicero, Pompey had fled to Greece. News arrived that he had organized an army to save the republic and take on Caesar’s populist army. I call it a populist army because, to the horror of the Senate, Caesar had promised his soldiers citizenship if he won this civil war.

CHAPTER TWO

RULER OF GALILEE

M Y FATHER FRETTED over Caesar’s rise to power. After securing Rome, Caesar freed Aristobulus and sent him to Judea with several Roman legions to help to hunt down Pompey. Jerusalem was all abuzz about the possible return of the old Hasmonean King Aristobulus to the city. Luckily, the wily Pompey proved too much for these amateurs. He defeated Aristobulus and then had him poisoned. Pompey then ordered General Scipio to chase down Aristobulus’ son Alexander, who had once again emerged from the desert to join his father. Scipio not only captured Alexander, he had him decapitated. Aristobulus’ wife and surviving son, Antigonus escaped to Ascalon.

Of course, we supported Pompey in all of this since it meant that my father’s rule would continue in Idumea and Judea. Thus, we were not only on the side of the general who killed the Hasmonean leaders, we were on the opposite side from Julius Caesar, who soon came to Macedonia to confront Pompey. Their first battle gave us hope. Couriers claimed that Caesar’s legions had suffered serious losses. Over confident, Pompey agreed to a land battle between Caesar’s remaining forces and his own at Pharsalus in Thessaly. As he had in Gaul, Caesar demonstrated that he was a tactical genius. Though greatly outnumbered, he defeated Pompey on August 9th, 48 B.C. My father was distraught.

Julius Caesar created the Julio-Claudian dynasty. I did not tell my father but Julius Caesar had become a model for me for many reasons. Born in 100 B.C., Caesar eventually claimed descent from the goddess Venus and Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome, who had escaped the fall of Troy. Early in his career, Caesar won a battle with Mithradates VI of Pontus. When he returned to Rome, he began to move up through the ranks.

All this I knew from my Roman history and further discussions with my father. He also filled me in about other philosophies in the empire. I had no patience for the Skeptics. They were the doubters of the day and could trace their lineage back to Diogenes, the silly old man who wandered about with a lantern looking for an honest man. Skeptics doubted all premises of all arguments, which led them to be passive, non-participants in the world of politics. As I’m sure you know, an off-shoot of skepticism is cynicism: the belief that most acts are from bad motives or self-interest. The Cynics tended