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259]
But some time afterward, when Salome happened to quarrel with Costobarus,
she sent him a bill of divorce
1
and dissolved her marriage with him, though this was not according to the
Jewish laws; for with us it is lawful for a husband to do so; but a wife;
if she departs from her husband, cannot of herself be married to another,
unless her former husband put her away. However, Salome chose to follow
not the law of her country, but the law of her authority, and so renounced
her wedlock; and told her brother Herod, that she left her husband out
of her good-will to him, because she perceived that he, with Antipater,
and Lysimachus, and Dositheus, were raising a sedition against him; as
an evidence whereof, she alleged the case of the sons of Babas, that they
had been by him preserved alive already for the interval of twelve years;
which proved to be true. But when Herod thus unexpectedly heard of it,
he was greatly surprised at it, and was the more surprised, because the
relation appeared incredible to him. As for the fact relating to these
sons of Babas, Herod had formerly taken great pains to bring them to punishment,
as being enemies to his government; but they were now forgotten by him,
on account of the length of time [since he had ordered them to be slain].
Now the cause of his ill-will and hatred to them arose hence, that while
Antigonus was king, Herod, with his army, besieged the city of Jerusalem,
where the distress and miseries which the besieged endured were so pressing,
that the greater number of them invited Herod into the city, and already
placed their hopes on him. Now the sons of Babas were of great dignity,
and had power among the multitude, and were faithful to Antigonus, and
were always raising calumnies against Herod, and encouraged the people
to preserve the government to that royal family which held it by inheritance.
So these men acted thus politically, and, as they thought, for their own
advantage; but when the city was taken, and Herod had gotten the government
into his hands, and Costobarus was appointed to hinder men from passing
out at the gates, and to guard the city, that those citizens that were
guilty, and of the party opposite to the king, might not get out of it,
Costobarus, being sensible that the sons of Babas were had in respect and
honor by the whole multitude, and supposing that their preservation might
be of great advantage to him in the changes of government afterward, he
set them by themselves, and concealed them in his own farms; and when the
thing was suspected, he assured Herod upon oath that he really knew nothing
of that matter, and so overcame the suspicions that lay upon him; nay,
after that, when the king had publicly proposed a reward for the discovery,
and had put in practice all sorts of methods for searching out this matter,
he would not confess it; but being persuaded that when he had at first
denied it, if the men were found, he should not escape unpunished, he was
forced to keep them secret, not only out of his good-will to them, but
out of a necessary regard to his own preservation also. But when the king
knew the thing, by his sister's information, he sent men to the places
where he had the intimation they were concealed, and ordered both them,
and those that were accused as guilty with them, to be slain, insomuch
that there were now none at all left of the kindred of Hyrcanus, and the
kingdom was entirely in Herod's own power, and there was nobody remaining
of such dignity as could put a stop to what he did against the Jewish laws.