Herod I the Great (73-4 BC) - the king of Judea since 40 (actually from the 37th), seized the throne with the help of Roman troops. He was suspicious and power-hungry, he destroyed everyone in whom he saw rivals; in Christian mythology, he is credited with the "beating of infants" upon the news of the birth of Christ (hence the negative meaning of the name Herod - a villain).
63 BC - The Roman general Pompeii introduced Judea to the Roman province of Syria with the rights of an autonomous region, but greatly curtailed its territory. One of the last Hasmoneans, Hyrcanus II, was appointed high priest and ethnarch, but the actual power was in the hands of the Judaized Edomite Antipater and his sons. Skillfully taking advantage of the difficult situation of the civil wars in Rome, the most energetic and insidious of the sons of Antipater, Herod, became the ruler of Judea as an "ally and friend of the Roman people."
King Herod was always highly attached to his benefactors, both because of his natural cunning and because of his sincere gratitude. When war broke out between Antony and Octavian, he chose Antony's side. Alas, Octavian became the winner, and Herod rushed to him, but did not fall to low entreaties and requests, but on the contrary, intending to present his behavior in a favorable light, he spoke in a very serious tone, while expressing a lot of sincerity and spiritual nobility.
Herod's acquaintance with Mark Antony took place in 43 BC, during the years of exile from Judea. 41 years - Herod arrives in Rome. “I loved Mark Antony,” he said to Octavian, “and did everything in my power to help him maintain supreme power, it was I who supplied his army with money and all the necessary supplies, and now, if I were not busy with the war with the Arabs, I willingly dedicated all my time and all my riches, as well as my life, to serve your rival.
So don't think that I betrayed him in a time of misfortune. When it became absolutely clear to me that passion was driving him to death, I advised Antony either to get rid of Cleopatra, or even to destroy her at any cost, and thus, having regained control of himself and becoming the master of the situation, conclude a profitable and honorable peace with you.
And listen to my advice, his death would never darken the skyline of the Great Empire. But alas, he did not use it, and you have now reaped the fruits of his negligence. So, from everything that I tell you, you can conclude how sincere and faithful my friendship with this person, who has already departed into the kingdom of shadows, was and remains. And if today you deem me worthy of your friendship, subject it to the most severe tests."
And Augustus could not resist such a speech, and therefore immediately declared himself the patron of Herod, commanding him to put the royal crown on his head again and approving him as king of the Jews, a special decree of the Senate adopted for this case.
But while Herod aroused surprise and admiration among foreigners, his compatriots and subjects were burning with irreconcilable hostility towards him. Indeed, what people were not forced to endure under the rule of an avaricious, stingy, suspicious and cruel king. Such was, and rather became such was Herod, nicknamed Herod the Great, who received a title often bestowed by history on the most evil rulers.
Promotional video:
If in foreign policy Herod the Great was limited by the instructions and control of Rome, then in the internal policy he was given almost complete freedom, which he did not fail to use to turn citizens into silent and meek subjects. Herod abolished the hereditary high priesthood, he exterminated the Hasmoneans and other noble families, and by confiscating their property he replenished the treasury. These activities were accompanied by land redistribution. Herod concentrated most of the lands in his hands, endowing his relatives and close associates with it, which created a new elite, dependent on the king and obsequiously serving him.
At the same time, Herod the Great went down in history as one of the largest city planners. During his reign, new city-states (Sebasteia, Caesarea, etc.), fortresses and many palaces were built. The cities were decorated with circuses, thermal baths (antique baths), theaters and other public buildings. In particular, Herod became famous for the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple, which he began, which, ironically, later became an important center of struggle against Rome. Herod often sent generous gifts to Athens, Sparta, and other Hellenistic cities.
All the time in need of large funds, Herod sharply increased the taxation of the population. Even with the successors of Herod, who ruled a significantly reduced territory, the annual receipts to the treasury reached 1000-1200 talents. Exorbitant taxes and levies extremely burdened the country and caused massive discontent, intensified by the tsar's innovations incompatible with Judaism. So, for example, all subjects had to swear allegiance to the Roman emperor and personally to Herod the Great. With all this, Herod did not cease to consider himself an adherent of the Jewish religion.
Herod the Great responded to constant popular protests and uprisings with massive bloody repressions, not sparing even members of his own family. He never felt peace, constantly tormented by fears and fears for his life and power. His family, whose members more than anyone else should give him comfort and consolation from public affairs, was the main source of his deadly fears. 37 BC - he married a princess of royal blood, as virtuous as she was beautiful - the famous Mariamne, the granddaughter of the high priest Hyrcanus II.
35 - he executed Mariamne's father and brother. Naturally proud and possessed of a strong and outstanding mind, she could not calmly endure the bullying of her jealous husband. Once Mariamne refused to share a bed with him and began to reproach for the murder of her father and brother. Herod barely endured this insult and was ready to immediately decide on extreme measures, but at that moment the king's sister Salome, who heard the noise of the quarrel, sent a cupbearer to him, who was ordered to say that Mariamne had asked to provide her with some kind of love drink for the king.
Herod was very frightened and asked him what kind of drink it was, and the cupbearer replied that Mariamne had given him something, the content of which he himself did not know. Hearing this, Herod ordered the torture of one of the eunuchs, the queen's most devoted servant.
The trial began, as a result of which several courtiers paid with their heads for sympathy for the king's wife, and the judges, as if guessing the mood of the tyrant, sentenced Mariamne to death, although, apart from the obvious hatred of her husband and the never-found potion, she was not in anything. was to blame. Having passed the sentence, both Herod the Great himself and some of the judges decided not to immediately carry it out, but to temporarily put Mariamne in one of the dungeons at the palace. But Salome's urgent requests this time also resolved the matter - soon, under the pretext of the possibility of popular unrest, if it became known that Mariamne was alive, the queen was secretly taken to execution.
After the execution of the queen, the tyrant's love for her flared up even more. All because this love was not at all momentary or weakened as a result of habit - no, on the contrary, from the very beginning it was a passionate impulse and did not fade away later, even with a long cohabitation. Now it seemed that in the form of punishment for the death of Queen Mariamne, love for her, dead, seized him with even greater force, so that now he often loudly called her by name to himself, indulging in unrestrained tears, and ended by not having strength to forget the unfortunate, drowned grief in endless drinking and revelry.
However, this did not help at all, so the tsar even launched state affairs, and ordered the closest servants to call Mariamne by name all the time, as if she was alive and could hear them and appear.
Meanwhile, when the king was in such a state, a plague spread in the country, which killed not only many common people, but even many of the king's friends, and all unanimously argued that this was punishment for him and all Judah for Mariamne. All this upset him so much that, under the pretext of hunting, he retired to a desolate, wild and deserted place. However, even there he could not enjoy peace, because a few days later he fell into a dangerous illness. Terrible pains hit the back of his head, followed by a complete breakdown of his mental faculties.
The healers summoned to him were powerless. And since all attempts to cure him with drugs were in vain, the doctors agreed not to torment the unfortunate with drugs and diets anymore, but decided to give him whatever he wanted, leaving the case for his recovery, for which, unfortunately, there was little hope.
And while similar tragic events agitated Judea and the rumor about the impending death of Herod the Great spread everywhere, the two sons of the executed Queen Mariamne, Alexander and Aristobulus, lived and received their education in Rome. Herod repented of his deed, bitterly experiencing all the crimes, asked them to return to their homeland. The young men were greeted with extraordinary jubilation. It should be noted that Herod had three male children and two girls by Mariamne. In addition, the king had a son by the name of Antipater from his first wife Doris. Vanity and exorbitant ambition were the true passions of the young prince, capable of any, even the most serious, crime for their sake.
Herod the Great announced the order of succession for each after his death: Antipater was to ascend the throne first, then Alexander and after Aristobulus. He advised them to live in complete and indestructible harmony, but at a speed in the royal family old strife revived again. Antipater, with the help of intrigues, managed to convince Herod that Alexander and Aristobulus were plotting to kill him.
All of Alexander's acquaintances were subjected to terrible torture. They had a chance to experience unprecedented suffering, and most of the unfortunate ones accepted a painful death, without admitting anything. However, their silence, in the opinion of Antipater, was not as sure a sign of their innocence as it served as a proof of love and commitment to the rebellious princes. At the court of Herod the Great, everyone was in constant anxiety, everyone was careful not to cast a shadow of suspicion on himself.
In the end, Alexander was arrested and thrown into prison, but this prince, by nature proud and open, did not lose heart and did not think to defend himself at all, and, as if wishing to hurt the tyrant even more painfully, wrote him letters from his cell with the following content:
“I have been scheming against you, there is nothing more reliable than this honest and direct statement. So it is pointless to torture so many people in order to snatch from them a confession to which I myself willingly confess. Your brother Ferora, your sister Salome, all your confidants and loyal servants, all your friends and even the friends of your friends have entered into this conspiracy. There is not a single one among your many subjects who would not want the quickest deliverance from you in the hope of finding a calm life with the death of the tyrant.
This kind of letter could not but alarm the king. Now he stopped trusting everyone. Constantly, even in a dream, he saw his son, drawing the sword from its scabbard and preparing to strike his father with it, and from this more and more often he had fits of rage and madness, similar to those that happened after the execution of Queen Mariamne. Denunciations, torture, crowds of people being dragged into prison - all this filled Judea with horror and sorrow. A new reconciliation between Herod and his sons was impossible.
The king, constantly fearing for his crown and life, decided to sacrifice two unfortunates, whom he now considered capable of regicide. He ordered the arrest of Aristobulus and force him to write a written confession about the impending coup. But even in this case he was disappointed - this is how this confession sounded: “We never had thoughts of encroaching on the life of the king, but if the suspicions of our father deprive us of the opportunity to live with him in peace and harmony, and even broad daylight for this it became hateful to our eyes, we decided to run away when the opportunity presented itself."
In the city of Berite (present-day Beirut), a council was assembled, which was to condemn the alleged criminals. Herod the Great for the second time acted as the accuser of his children with such fervor that the audience involuntarily believed him. The judges, with shameful servility, almost unanimously pronounced the death sentence, after which in 6 BC Alexander and Aristobulus were strangled in the city of Sebaste, where they were kept throughout the process, without even receiving permission to come to Verit and there to personally defend themselves … It seems highly doubtful that the unfortunate princes were really guilty of what they were so definitely accused of.
Now Antipater no longer had competitors, although earlier the order of inheritance established by Herod had to completely satisfy him. All that was left was to hope for the quick death of the unfortunate king, whose old age and illnesses in the shortest time promised to clear the royal throne for his successors.
Antipater, day by day, was more and more eager to rule and therefore decided to overcome the last obstacle that stood in the way of his ambitious plans as soon as possible. It was he who conspired against Herod the Great. Only one single circumstance prevented the criminal son from immediately fulfilling his plans - he was hated by the common people and the army, and it is precisely their location that everyone who intends to usurp the supreme power needs first of all.
However, Herod learned all the details of Antipater's conspiracy. He called a large meeting, presided over by Queen, the king's relatives, prosecutors of the criminal Antipater, and some of the servants, caught red-handed, seized with letters that served as evidence of their crime. After listening to both sides, the judge ordered to bring the poison, about which so much was said at this trial, in order to try its power in action. The poison was given to one of those sentenced to death, and he died immediately. Antipater was taken to prison.
With such a state of affairs and mood, the horror with which Herod heard from the Eastern Magi the news that the true king of the Jews was born, to whom they came from the distant East, is quite understandable. Herod's first thought was to kill the newborn king (Jesus Christ), and when he could not find him, he did not stop before the universal beating of nursing infants in Bethlehem (the Gospel of Matthew).
Soon, Herod the Great was struck by one of the most severe attacks of the disease. He was tormented by unbearable hunger, which no food could relieve. The stomach and other internal organs were ulcerated and eaten away. It was difficult for him to breathe, and his breathing became so fetid that no one dared to approach him. Being in such a sad and terrible situation, he had to suffer from unbearable pain. Seeing that his illness was incurable, the tyrant distributed money from his treasury to soldiers, dignitaries, nobles and friends. However, this act of genuine generosity was followed by another - a terrible one, which hardly anyone else had dared before Herod.
Herod the Great ordered the most distinguished Jews to travel to Jericho on pain of death. When they arrived there, they were ordered to gather at the hippodrome. Then he summoned Salome and Alexas, Salome's wife, and ordered immediately after his death to surround the hippodrome with soldiers and kill everyone who would be there. "Thus," he said, "you will make a worthy sacrifice in my honor, so extraordinary, which has never happened at the funeral of other kings."
Herod conjured Salome and Alexas to fulfill his barbaric will, which made it possible to become a worthy completion of his insane reign, but his will was not fulfilled. Salome and her husband did not dare to do something that could cost their lives. Meanwhile, Herod's illness became more and more terrible, from pain he grabbed the sword, wanting to take his own life. A rumor spread that Herod had committed suicide, and this rumor reached Antipater's ears. Then the prince decided to get out of the dungeon and even ascend the throne. He tried to bribe the Tsar's guards, but he, already informed of everything, ordered the immediate death of the villain, which was done …
S. Mussky