Herod, aged just fifteen, immediately showed his mettle when he hunted down and killed a band of fanatical religious Jews. In Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin were incensed by young Herod’s unauthorized killings and summoned him for trial. However, the Romans appreciated that Antipater and his sons were the sort of allies required to govern this turbulent people. The Roman governor of Syria ordered Herod’s acquittal and awarded him greater powers.
Herod was already exceptional. He was, wrote Josephus, ‘blessed with every gift of looks, body and mind’. Named to be a hero, he was sophisticated enough to charm and impress the pre-eminent Romans of the era. He was sexually voracious – or, as Josephus put it, ‘slave to his passions’ – yet he was not crude. He had taste in architecture, was highly educated in Greek, Latin and Jewish culture and, when not busy with politics and pleasure, he enjoyed debates on history and philosophy. Yet power always came first and this craving would poison every relationship he had. Son of a second-generation Idumean convert to Judaism and an Arab mother (hence his brother was called Phasael – Faisal), Herod was a cosmopolitan who could play the Roman and the Greek and the Jew. But the Jews never quite forgave his mongrel origins. Raised in a rich but vigilant and ruthless household, he would see the destruction of his closest family and sense the fragility of power and the facility of terror. He grew up using death as a political tooclass="underline" paranoid, over-sensitive, almost hysterical, this tough teenager, a ‘man of great barbarity’ as well as sensitivity, played to survive and dominate at all costs.
After Caesar was assassinated in 44, Cassius (who was one of his killers) arrived to govern Syria. Herod’s father Antipater switched sides. But the somersaults of intrigue finally caught up with him, and he was poisoned by a rival, who managed to occupy Jerusalem – until Herod had him murdered. Soon afterwards, Cassius and his fellow assassin Brutus were defeated at Philippi. The victors were Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son Octavian, twenty-two years old, and the swashbuckling general Mark Antony. They split the empire, Antony receiving the East. As Antony processed towards Syria, two young potentates, with radically opposite interests, rushed to meet the Roman strongman. One wanted to restore the Jewish kingdom, the other to swallow it into her ancestral empire.36
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Cleopatra came to Antony, as a queen at the height of her charisma, scion of the Ptolemies, the most prestigious dynasty in the known world, and, as Isis-Aphrodite to meet her Dionysus, who could grant her the provinces of her forefathers.
Their meeting was fateful for both. Antony was fourteen years older than her but in his prime: he was hard-drinking, thick-necked, barrel-chested, lantern-jawed and prided himself on his muscular legs. He was dazzled by Cleopatra and keen to embrace the Greek culture and sybaritic splendour of the East, seeing himself as the heir of Alexander, descendant of Hercules – and Dionysus of course. But he also required Egyptian money and provisions for his planned Parthian invasion. Thus they needed each other, and necessity is so often the mother of romance. Antony and Cleopatra celebrated their alliance and affair by murdering Cleopatra’s sister (she had already murdered her brother).
Herod, too, had ridden hastily to Antony. As a young cavalry commander in Egypt, the general had been cultivated by Herod’s father. He therefore appointed Herod and his brother as the real rulers of Judaea with High Priest Hyrcanus as the figurehead. Herod celebrated his rising power with a royal engagement. His fiancée was Mariamme, a Maccabean princess who, by family intermarriage, was the granddaughter of two kings. Her body, wrote Josephus, was as beautiful as her face. This relationship, played out in Jerusalem, would be passionately destructive.
Antony followed Cleopatra, now pregnant with his twins, to her capital, Alexandria. But, just as it appeared that Herod’s rise was assured, the Parthians invaded Syria. Antigonos, a Maccabean prince who was Hyrcanus’ nephew, offered the Parthians 1,000 talents and a harem of 500 girls in exchange for Jerusalem.
PACORUS: PARTHIAN SHOT
The Jewish city rose against the Roman puppets Herod and his brother Phasael. Besieged in the royal palace opposite the Temple, the brothers defeated the rebellion – but the Parthians were a different matter. Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims – it was the Feast of Weeks – as Maccabean supporters opened the gates for the Parthian prince Pacorus* and his protégé Antigonos. Jerusalem celebrated the return of the Maccabees.
The Parthians pretended to play the honest broker between Herod and Antigonos. Instead they lured Herod’s brother Phasael into a trap. Herod faced elimination as the Parthians looted the city and then handed power to Antigonos as king of Judaea and high priest.† He mutilated his uncle Hyrcanus, cutting off his ears, to disqualify him from the high priesthood. As for Herod’s brother Phasael, he was either murdered or dashed out his own brains.
Herod had lost Jerusalem and his brother. He had backed the Romans, but it was the Parthians who had conquered the Middle East. A mercurial man, he was surely cyclothymic, if not a manic depressive. But his will to power, pungent intelligence, greed for life and instinct for survival were ferocious. He almost cracked up, but he overcame his nerves. By night, he gathered his entourage for a desperate escape, and a bid for power.
HEROD: ESCAPE TO CLEOPATRA
Herod, accompanied by his retinue – 500 concubines, his mother, sister, and, most importantly, his fiancée, the Maccabee princess Mariamme – galloped out of Jerusalem into the barren Judaean hills. King Antigonos, furious that Herod had escaped with his concubines (clearly the harem offered as payment to the Parthians) sent his cavalry in pursuit. As he fled through the hills, Herod again broke down and tried to commit suicide, but his guards snatched his raised sword. Soon afterwards Antigonos’ horsemen caught up with his caravan. Herod recovered his confidence and defeated them. Leaving his entourage in the impregnable mountain fortress of Masada, he himself escaped to Egypt.
Antony had already left for Rome, but Herod was welcomed by Queen Cleopatra, who offered him employment in a bid to keep him in Alexandria. Instead Herod sailed for Rome, accompanied by his fiancée’s little brother, Jonathan, a Maccabean prince who was his candidate for the Judaean throne. But Antony, who was now planning a war to expel the Parthians, realized that this was no job for a child; it would require Herod’s ruthless competence.
Antony and Octavian, his partner in ruling the empire, escorted Herod to the Senate where he was declared king of Judaea and Roman ally: rex socius et amicus populi Romani. The newly minted King Herod walked out of the Senate flanked by Octavian and Antony, the two pillars of the world, quite a moment for a half-Jew half-Arab from the mountains of Edom. His relationship with these two men would be the foundation of his forty-year reign of terror and magnificence. However, he was a long way from ruling a kingdom: the Parthians still occupied the east; Antigonos reigned in Jerusalem. To the Jews, Herod was a Roman stooge and Idumean mongrel. He would have to fight for every inch of his kingdom, and then Jerusalem.37