The Provinces of the Roman Empire 26

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 26

he was able to intercept a band of faithful gladiators of Antonius,

who were marching from Asia Minor through Syria towards Egypt to lend

assistance to their master. When he, before resorting to Caesar at

Rhodes to obtain his pardon, caused the last male offshoot of the

Maccabaean house, the eighty-years old Hyrcanus, to whom the house of

Antipater was indebted for its position, to be at all events put to

death, he in reality exaggerated the necessary caution. Caesar did

what policy bade him do, especially as the support of Herod was of

importance for the intended Egyptian expedition. He confirmed Herod,

glad to be vanquished, in his dominion, and extended it, partly by

giving back the possessions wrested from him by Cleopatra, partly by

further gifts; the whole coast from Gaza to Strato’s Tower, the later

Caesarea, the Samaritan region inserted between Judaea and Galilee, and

a number of towns to the east of the Jordan thenceforth obeyed Herod.

On the consolidation of the Roman monarchy the Jewish principality was

withdrawn from the reach of further external crises.

 

[Sidenote: Government of Herod.]

 

From the Roman standpoint the conduct of the new dynasty appears

correct, in a way to draw tears from the eyes of the observer. It

took part at first for Pompeius, then for Caesar the father, then

for Cassius and Brutus, then for the triumvirs, then for Antonius,

lastly for Caesar the son; fidelity varies, as does the watchword.

Nevertheless this conduct is not to be denied the merit of consistency

and firmness. The factions which rent the ruling burgess-body, whether

republic or monarchy, whether Caesar or Antonius, in reality nowise

concerned the dependent provinces, especially those of the Greek East.

The demoralisation which is combined with all revolutionary change

of government--the degrading confusion between internal fidelity and

external obedience--was brought in this case most glaringly to light;

but the fulfilment of duty, such as the Roman commonwealth claimed

from its subjects, had been satisfied by king Herod to an extent

of which nobler and greater natures would certainly not have been

capable. In presence of the Parthians he constantly, even in critical

circumstances, held firmly to the protectors whom he had once chosen.

 

[Sidenote: In its relation to the Jews.]

 

From the standpoint of internal Jewish politics the government of Herod

was the setting aside of the theocracy, and in so far a continuance

of, and in fact an advance upon, the government of the Maccabees, as

the separation of the political and the ecclesiastical government

was carried out with the utmost precision in the contrast between

the all-powerful king of foreign birth and the powerless high-priest

often and arbitrarily changed. No doubt the royal position was sooner

pardoned in the Jewish high-priest than in a man who was a foreigner

and incapable of priestly consecration; and, if the Hasmonaeans

represented outwardly the independence of Judaism, the Idumaean held

his royal power over the Jews in fee from the lord-paramount. The

reaction of this insoluble conflict on a deeply-impassioned nature

confronts us in the whole life-career of the man, who causes much

suffering, but has felt perhaps not less. At all events the energy, the

constancy, the yielding to the inevitable, the military and political

dexterity, where there was room for it, secure for the king of the Jews

a certain place in the panorama of a remarkable epoch.

 

[Sidenote: Herod’s character and aims.]

 

To describe in detail the government of Herod for almost forty

years--he died in the year 750 {4 B.C.}--as the accounts of it

preserved at great length allow us to do, is not the task of the

historian of Rome. There is probably no royal house of any age in which

bloody feuds raged in an equal degree between parents and children,

between husbands and wives, and between brothers and sisters; the

emperor Augustus and his governors in Syria turned away with horror

from the share in the work of murder which was suggested to them; not

the least revolting trait in this picture of horrors is the utter

want of object in most of the executions, ordained as a rule upon

groundless suspicion, and the despairing remorse of the perpetrator,

which constantly followed. Vigorously and intelligently as the king

took care of the interest of his country, so far as he could and might,

and energetically as, not merely in Palestine but throughout the

empire, he befriended the Jews with his treasures and with his no small

influence--for the decision of Agrippa favourable to the Jews in the

great imperial affair of Asia Minor (p. 171) they were substantially

indebted to him--he found love and fidelity in Idumaea perhaps and

Samaria, but not among the people of Israel; here he was, and continued

to be, not so much the man laden with the guilt of blood in many

forms, as above all the foreigner. As it was one of the mainsprings of

that domestic war, that his wife of the Hasmonaean family, the fair

Mariamne, and their children were regarded and dreaded by him more as

Jews than as his own, he himself gave __EXPRESSION__ to the feeling that

he was as much drawn towards the Greeks as repelled by the Jews. It

is significant that he had the sons, for whom in the first instance

he destined the succession, brought up in Rome. While out of his

inexhaustible riches he loaded the Greek cities of other lands with

gifts and embellished them with temples, he built for the Jews no doubt

also, but not in the Jewish sense. The buildings of the circus and

theatre in Jerusalem itself, as well as the temples for the imperial

worship in the Jewish towns, were regarded by the pious Israelite as

a summons to blaspheme God. His conversion of the temple in Jerusalem

into a magnificent building was done half against the will of the

devout; much as they admired the building, his introduction into it of

a golden eagle was taken more amiss than all the sentences of death

ordained by him, and led to a popular insurrection, to which the eagle

fell a sacrifice, and thereupon doubtless the devotees as well, who

tore it down.

 

[Sidenote: Energy of his rule.]

 

Herod knew the land sufficiently not to let matters come to

extremities; if it had been possible to Hellenise it, the will to that

effect would not have been wanting on his part. In energy the Idumaean

was not inferior to the best Hasmonaeans. The construction of the great

harbour at Strato’s Tower, or as the town entirely rebuilt by Herod was

thenceforth called, Caesarea, first gave to a coast poor in harbours

what it needed, and throughout the whole period of the empire the town

remained a chief emporium of southern Syria. What the government was

able to furnish in other respects--development of natural resources,

intervention in case of famine and other calamities, above all things

internal and external security--was furnished by Herod. The evil of

brigandage was done away, and the defence--so uncommonly difficult

in these regions--of the frontier against the roving tribes of the

desert was carried out with sternness and consistency. Thereby the

Roman government was induced to place under him still further regions,

Ituraea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, Batanaea. Thenceforth his dominion

extended, as we have already mentioned (p. 146), compactly over the

region beyond the Jordan as far as towards Damascus and to the Hermon

mountains; so far as we can discern, after those further assignments

there was in the whole domain which we have indicated no longer

any free city or any rule independent of Herod. The defence of the

frontier itself fell more on the Arabian king than on the king of the

Jews; but, so far as it devolved on him, the series of well-provided

frontier-forts brought about here a general peace, such as had not

hitherto been known in those regions. We can understand how Agrippa,

after inspecting the maritime and military structures of Herod, should

have discerned in him an associate striving in a like spirit towards

the great work of organising the empire, and should have treated him in

this sense.

 

[Sidenote: The end of Herod and the partition of his kingdom.]

 

His kingdom had no lasting existence. Herod himself apportioned it

in his testament among his three sons, and Augustus confirmed the

arrangement in the main, only placing the important port of Gaza and

the Greek towns beyond the Jordan immediately under the governor

of Syria. The northern portions of the kingdom were separated from

the mainland; the territory last acquired by Herod to the south of

Damascus, Batanaea with the districts belonging to it, was obtained by

Philip; Galilee and Peraea, that is, the Transjordanic domain, so far

as it was not Greek, by Herod Antipas--both as tetrarchs; these two

petty principalities continued, at first as separate, then as united

under Herod “the Great’s” great-grandson Agrippa II., with slight

interruptions to subsist down to the time of Trajan. We have already

mentioned their government when describing eastern Syria and Arabia (p.

146 f.). Here it may only be added that these Herodians continued to

rule, if not with the energy, at least in the sense and spirit of the

founder of the dynasty. The towns established by them--Caesarea, the

ancient Paneas, in the northern territory, and Tiberias in Galilee--had

a Hellenic organisation quite after the manner of Herod; characteristic

is the proscription, which the Jewish Rabbis on account of a tomb found

at the laying out of Tiberias decreed over the unclean city.

 

[Sidenote: Judaea under Archelaus.]

 

[Sidenote: Judaea a Roman province.]

 

The main country, Judaea, along with Samaria on the north and Idumaea

on the south, was destined for Archelaus by his father’s will. But

this succession was not accordant with the wishes of the nation. The

orthodox, that is, the Pharisees, ruled with virtual exclusiveness

the mass of the people; and, if hitherto the fear of the Lord had

been in some measure kept down by the fear of the unscrupulously

energetic king, the mind of the great majority of the Jews was set

upon re-establishing under the protectorate of Rome the pure and godly

sacerdotal government, as it had once been set up by the Persian

authorities. Immediately after the death of the old king the masses

in Jerusalem had congregated to demand the setting aside of the

high-priest nominated by Herod and the ejection of the unbelievers from

the holy city, where the Passover was just to be celebrated; Archelaus

had been under the necessity of beginning his government by charging

into these masses; a number of dead were counted, and the observance

of the festival was suspended. The Roman governor of Syria--the

same Varus, whose folly soon afterwards cost the Romans Germany--on

whom it primarily devolved to maintain order in the land during the

interregnum, had allowed these mutinous bands in Jerusalem to send

to Rome, where the occupation of the Jewish throne was just being

discussed, a deputation of fifty persons to request the abolition

of the monarchy; and, when Augustus gave audience to it, eight

thousand Jews of the capital escorted it to the temple of Apollo.

The fanatical Jews at home meanwhile continued to help themselves;

the Roman garrison, which was stationed in the temple, was assailed

with violence, and pious bands of brigands filled the land; Varus had

to call out the legions and to restore quiet with the sword. It was

a warning for the suzerain, a supplementary justification of king

Herod’s violent but effective government. But Augustus, with all the

weakness which he so often showed, particularly in later years, while

dismissing, no doubt, the representatives of those fanatical masses

and their request, yet executed in the main the testament of Herod,

and gave over the rule in Jerusalem to Archelaus shorn of the kingly

title, which Augustus preferred for a time not to concede to the

untried young man; shorn, moreover, of the northern territories, and

reduced also in military status by the taking away of the defence of

the frontier. The circumstance that at the instigation of Augustus

the taxes raised to a high pitch under Herod were lowered, could but

little better the position of the tetrarch. The personal incapacity

and worthlessness of Archelaus were hardly needed, in addition, to

make him impossible; a few years later (A.D. 6) Augustus saw himself

compelled to depose him. Now he did at length the will of those

mutineers; the monarchy was abolished, and while on the one hand the

land was taken into direct Roman administration, on the other hand,

so far as an internal government was allowed by the side of this,

it was given over to the senate of Jerusalem. This procedure may

certainly have been determined in part by assurances given earlier by

Augustus to Herod as regards the succession, in part by the more and

more apparent, and in general doubtless justifiable, disinclination

of the imperial government to larger client-states possessing some

measure of independent self-movement. What took place shortly before

or soon after in Galatia, in Cappadocia, in Mauretania, explains why

in Palestine also the kingdom of Herod hardly survived himself. But, as the immediate government was organised in Palestine, it was even administratively a bad retrograde step as compared with the Herodian;