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[317] When Caesar had heard these pleadings, he dissolved the assembly; but a few days afterwards he appointed Archelaus, not indeed to be king of the whole country, but ethnarch of the one half of that which had been subject to Herod, and promised to give him the royal dignity hereafter, if he governed his part virtuously. But as for the other half, he divided it into two parts, and gave it to two other of Herod's sons, to Philip and to Antipas, that Antipas who disputed with Archelaus for the whole kingdom. Now to him it was that Peres and Galilee paid their tribute, which amounted annually to two hundred talents, 1 while Batanea, with Trachonitis, as well as Auranitis, with a certain part of what was called the House of Zenodorus, 2 paid the tribute of one hundred talents to Philip; but Idumea, and Judea, and the country of Samaria paid tribute to Archelaus, but had now a fourth part of that tribute taken off by the order of Caesar, who decreed them that mitigation, because they did not join in this revolt with the rest of the multitude. There were also certain of the cities which paid tribute to Archelaus: Strato's Tower and Sebaste, with Joppa and Jerusalem; for as to Gaza, and Gadara, and Hippos, they were Grecian cities, which Caesar separated from his government, and added them to the province of Syria. Now the tribute-money that came to Archelaus every year from his own dominions amounted to six hundred talents.

1 This is not true. See Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 9. sect. 3, 4; and ch. 12. sect. 2; and ch. 13. sect. 1, 2. Antiq. B. XV. ch. 3. sect. 5; and ch. 10. sect. 2, 3. Antiq. B. XVI. ch. 9. sect. 3. Since Josephus here informs us that Archelaus had one half of the kingdom of Herod, and presently informs us further that Archelaus's annual income, after an abatement of one quarter for the present, was 600 talents, we may therefore ga ther pretty nearly what was Herod the Great's yearly income, I mean about 1600 talents, which, at the known value of 3000 shekels to a talent, and about 2s. 10d. to a shekel, in the days of Josephus, see the note on Antiq. B. III. ch. 8. sect. 2, amounts to 680,000 sterling per annum; which income, though great in itself, bearing no proportion to his vast expenses every where visible in Josephus, and to the vast sums he left behind him in his will, ch. 8. sect. 1, and ch. 12. sect. 1, the rest must have arisen either from his confiscation of those great men's estates whom he put to death, or made to pay fine for the saving of their lives, or from some other heavy methods of oppression which such savage tyrants usually exercise upon their miserable subjects; or rather from these several methods not together, all which yet seem very much too small for his expenses, being drawn from no larger a nation than that of the Jews, which was very populous, but without the advantage of trade to bring them riches; so that I cannot but strongly suspect that no small part of this his wealth arose from another source; I mean from some vast sums he took out of David's sepulcher, but concealed from the people. See the note on Antiq. B. VII. ch. 15. sect. 3.

2 Take here a very useful note of Grotias, on Luke 3:1, here quoted by Dr. Hudson: "When Josephus says that some part of the house (or possession) of Zenodorus (i.e. Abilene) was allotted to Philip, he thereby declares that the larger part of it belonged to another. This other was Lysanias, whom Luke mentions, of the posterity of that Lysanias who was possessed of the same country called Abilene, from the city Abila, and by others Chalcidene, from the city Chaleis, when the government of the East was under Antonius, and this after Ptolemy, the son of Menneus; from which Lysanias this country came to be commonly called the Country of Lysanias; and as, after the death of the former Lyanias, it was called the tetrarchy of Zenodorus, so, after the death of Zenodorus, or when the time for which he hired it was ended. when another Lysanias, of the same name with the former, was possessed of the same country, it began to be called the Tetrarchy of Lysanias." However, since Josephus elsewhere (Antiq. B. XX. ch. 7. sect. 1) clearly distinguishes Abilene from Cilalcidcue, Groius must be here so far mistaken.

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