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[150]
Now some there are who stand amazed at the diversity of Herod's nature
and purposes; for when we have respect to his magnificence, and the benefits
which he bestowed on all mankind, there is no possibility for even those
that had the least respect for him to deny, or not openly to confess, that
he had a nature vastly beneficent; but when any one looks upon the punishments
he inflicted, and the injuries he did, not only to his subjects, but to
his nearest relations, and takes notice of his severe and unrelenting disposition
there, he will be forced to allow that he was brutish, and a stranger to
all humanity; insomuch that these men suppose his nature to be different,
and sometimes at contradiction with itself; but I am myself of another
opinion, and imagine that the occasion of both these sort of actions was
one and the same; for being a man ambitious of honor, and quite overcome
by that passion, he was induced to be magnificent, wherever there appeared
any hopes of a future memorial, or of reputation at present; and as his
expenses were beyond his abilities, he was necessitated to be harsh to
his subjects; for the persons on whom he expended his money were so many,
that they made him a very bad procurer of it; and because he was conscious
that he was hated by those under him, for the injuries he did them, he
thought it not an easy thing to amend his offenses, for that it was inconvenient
for his revenue; he therefore strove on the other side to make their ill-will
an occasion of his gains. As to his own court, therefore, if any one was
not very obsequious to him in his language, and would not confess himself
to be his slave, or but seemed to think of any innovation in his government,
he was not able to contain himself, but prosecuted his very kindred and
friends, and punished them as if they were enemies and this wickedness
he undertook out of a desire that he might be himself alone honored. Now
for this, my assertion about that passion of his, we have the greatest
evidence, by what he did to honor Caesar and Agrippa, and his other friends;
for with what honors he paid his respects to them who were his superiors,
the same did he desire to be paid to himself; and what he thought the most
excellent present he could make another, he discovered an inclination to
have the like presented to himself. But now the Jewish nation is by their
law a stranger to all such things, and accustomed to prefer righteousness
to glory; for which reason that nation was not agreeable to him, because
it was out of their power to flatter the king's ambition with statues or
temples, or any other such performances; And this seems to me to have been
at once the occasion of Herod's crimes as to his own courtiers and counselors,
and of his benefactions as to foreigners and those that had no relation
to him.
1
1 AN EMBASSAGE IN CYRENE AND ASIA TO CAESAR, CONCERNING THE COMPLAINTS THEY HAD TO MAKE AGAINST THE GREEKS; WITH COPIES OF THE EPISTLES WHICH CAESAR AND AGRIPPA WROTE TO THE CITIES FOR THEM.
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