Herod the Great

(?73–4 BC)

   King of Judea 37–4 BC. On the factual record, Herod was one of the ablest and most successful rulers in Jewish history. As a reliable and stable Roman clientstate in a sensitive border region, Judea under Herod was able to expand its borders and to enjoy decades of peace and prosperity. Yet, in the popular image Herod left behind him, all his formidable achievements counted for little against the stories of his cruelty and despotism. Above all, his name was later dogged in the Christian world by the improbable legend in the Gospel of St Matthew, concerning the ‘slaughter of the innocents’ in Bethlehem, at the time when Jesus was born.

   Herod was by descent an Idumean (Edomite), one of the desert tribes in southern Judea conquered and converted to Judaism by HYRCANUS I about 120 BC. His father ANTIPATER became chief minister of Judea and made Herod governor of Galilee at the age of twenty-five. The Roman empire was at the time rent by civil war. After JULIUS CAESAR was assassinated in 44 BC, Herod adroitly switched his allegiance to Cassius, and then to Mark Antony. When the Parthians invaded Palestine from the east, Herod escaped and made his way to Rome. His patron Antony introduced him to Caesar’s nephew Octavian, and Herod boldly requested Roman endorsement for his claim to become king of Judea. This was granted after he had appeared before the Roman senate. But the kingdom he sought was still under enemy occupation. In 39 BC Herod landed on the Palestinian coast with a motley force of mercenaries, and established a base in the Galilee. With the Roman occupation of Jerusalem, he was placed on the throne, under the protection of Antony. In 31 BC Antony and CLEOPATRA VII were defeated by Octavian in the battle of Actium, and committed suicide in Egypt. Octavian was proclaimed emperor, and took the name of Augustus. Herod lost no time in switching his support to the victor. Octavian confirmed his rule, and restored to him the Judean territories Antony had granted to Cleopatra. Herod’s domain continued to expand, by inclusion of the Golan Heights and other territories east of the Sea of Galilee, in southern Syria. The extent of his kingdom now roughly corresponded to that of David and Solomon, or to the territory that had been controlled by the Hasmonean ruler Alexander JANNAI before the Roman advent in the area. Soon after gaining the throne of Judea, Herod clamped down on the authority of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish tribunal in the country. Herod put to death forty-five of its leading members and replaced them with his own supporters. The jurisdiction of the council was confined to points of religious doctrine. In 37 BC Herod had married MARIAMNE, a princess of the Hasmonean dynasty, but the marriage was a tragic one. He loved her, but she resented him as an upstart and usurper. His jealousy and suspicion of his Hasmonean relatives became more and more obsessive. The first victim was Mariamne’s younger brother, an attractive youth of seventeen. Yielding to family pressure, Herod had him appointed high priest, but saw to it that he was ‘accidentally’ drowned while bathing in the pool of the winter palace at Jericho. Mariamne herself was later arrested and executed on dubious charges of having conspired against her husband. Her mother Alexandra was also put to death a year later. Mariamne’s two surviving sons, ARCHELAUS and Alexander, were sent by their father to be educated in Rome. On their return, they aroused popular affection by their good looks and Hasmonean lineage, and met the fate of their mother and grandmother.

   At that period there was already a substantial Jewish diaspora scattered through the empire, with the largest and most influential community in Alexandria. These outside communities accepted Herod as king of the Jews, and felt heartened by his access to the Roman rulers. On the other hand, many of his own subjects turned against him for his brutal treatment of the Hasmonean dynasty, his preference for Hellenist culture, and his subservience towards the Romans.

   Herod had altogether ten wives - the last two being his own nieces - and sixteen children. By his last will, the realm was divided among three of his sons - Archelaus, ANTIPAS and Philip.

   The relations between an imperial power and its satellites are seldom easy or constant. Herod had been successful in bartering his loyalty for Roman support. But after his death, the marriage of convenience started to crumble. Herod’s Buildings

   Herod, like King Solomon almost a thousand years earlier, felt the urge to perpetuate his name with a monumental building programme. Though there were already two fortified citadels in Jerusalem - Akra to the west of the Temple area, and Antonia to the northwest - Herod chose the highest point of the Upper City for a new one. Here, in 23 BC, work began on forty-five-foot ram-parts that enclosed an area twice as large as Antonia. In them three large towers were built, and named after his brother Phasael, his friend Hippicus and his wife Mariamne. Each stood on a sloping platform of huge stones which can still be seen today, to the right of the Jaffa Gate. This Citadel palace contained halls and rooms panelled in marble, shaded with trees and shrubs, and fountains of water brought by a special aqueduct from the hills to the south-east.

   At Jericho, an oasis thirteen hundred feet below sea level, Herod laid out a beautiful garden of date palms and balsam trees to surround his winter palace, built of brick that was probably brought from Italy. JOSEPHUS describes both an amphitheatre and a hippodrome here. In a second group of buildings there seems to have been a Roman bath complex and a gymnasium. In line with his leaning towards Greek and Roman culture, Herod became the first Jewish ruler to encourage athletic pursuits among his subjects.

   Herod reconstructed Samaria, the hilltop city founded by King Omri in the 9 century BC, and developed by his son King Ahab. Further north, at Panias (Banias) at the foot of Mount Hermon, he constructed a small temple of Egyptian granite in honour of the emperor Augustus, who granted to him the Golan Heights area during an imperial visit in 20 BC.

   His most dramatic palace was on the top of Massada rock overlooking the harsh landscape of the Dead Sea. This too was designed as a fortress, and its thick outer walls contained thirty-eight towers. The remains of his two villas can be seen today; the smaller one is on tiers cut out of the rock-face at the northern end of the Mount. The store-rooms and Roman bath have been reconstructed recently and give clear evidence of the luxurious living Herod brought to this desolate place. Water was brought from nearby wadis during winter rains, and stored in great rock cisterns.

   In 20 BC Herod began his greatest architectural achievement, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Second Temple, erected five hundred years earlier at the time of the Return from Babylonia, had been based on the measurements of Solomon’s Temple, and its internal layout could not be changed. But Herod doubled the height, faced the building with white stone, and decorated it with gold. As a setting for the Temple, Herod built around it an enormous platform of flagstones. This has remained intact to this day, and now contains the beautiful Dome of the Rock and the El Aksa Mosque. The platform is suspended on a series of arches and enclosed by four huge walls. After the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD 70, the Western (Wailing) Wall became, and still is, the most sacred Holy Place of the Jews.

   The site Herod chose for his burial place, Herodium, lies five miles southwest of Bethlehem. Josephus tells us there stood at this spot ‘twin hills like a woman’s breasts’ and that Herod cut one down and piled the rock and earth on the other. It was here this strange tyrant king was brought for burial after his death in Jericho. HERTZ, Gustave 1887–1950. German physicist and Nobel laureate, 1925. Hertz, a professor at Halle and Berlin, was the nephew of Heinrich Hertz, the discoverer of electro-magnetic waves. In 1925 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with James FRANCK for work on electrons. In 1932 he discovered a new method of isolating isotopes. He was forced to resign his post after HITLER came to power. From 1945 he worked in the Soviet Union and East Germany.