VI. THE LATER HERODS
(29) Herod the Tetrarch: his Marriage with Herodias and Murder of John the Baptist[[179]]
Now about this time a quarrel arose between Aretas king of Petra[[180]] and Herod on the following ground. Herod the Tetrarch married the daughter of Aretas and had now lived with her a long time. On the eve of a journey to Rome he lodged in the house of Herod, his half-brother on the father’s side; the mother of this Herod was the daughter of Simon the high priest. There he fell in love with Herodias his brother’s wife (she was the daughter of their brother Aristobulus and sister of Agrippa the Great[[181]]) and had the effrontery to propose marriage. She met his advances and a compact was made that she should leave her home and come to him on his return from Rome; it was part of the compact that he should divorce the daughter of Aretas. The agreement settled, he set sail for Rome. On his return, after discharging his commission in that city, his wife, who had got wind of the compact with Herodias, bade her husband, who was still unaware that she knew all, send her away to Machærus—on the frontier between the dominions of Aretas and Herod—without revealing her intentions. Herod, accordingly, let her go, not suspecting that the poor woman had any inkling of the plot. She, however, had long since sent word to Machærus, which at that time[[182]] was subject to her father, and so found that the general in command[[183]] there had everything in readiness for her (intended) journey. No sooner, therefore, had she arrived (at Machærus) than she was off again into Arabia, escorted by one general after another in turn, and so reached her father post haste and told him of Herod’s intentions.
Aretas seized this occasion for hostilities and also for raising the question of frontiers in the region of Gamala;[[184]] the two belligerents mustered their armies and opened war, sending their generals as their representatives in the field. A battle took place in which the whole of Herod’s army was cut to pieces as the result of the defection of a contingent from Philip’s tetrarchy which enlisted with Herod’s forces and then deserted. Herod reported the matter to Tiberius, who was indignant at the aggression of Aretas and wrote instructions to Vitellius to go to war with him and either to take him alive and bring him a prisoner to Rome or to kill him and send him his head. Such were the injunctions of Tiberius to the governor of Syria.
Some of the Jews, however, regarded the destruction of Herod’s army as the work of God, who thus exacted very just retribution for John, surnamed the Baptist, Herod’s victim. John was a good man who bade the Jews first cultivate virtue by justice[[185]] towards each other and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for immersion,[[186]] he said, would only appear acceptable to God if practised, not as an expiation for specific offences, but for the purification of the body, when the soul had been already thoroughly cleansed by righteousness. Now when all men[[187]] listened to his words with the greatest delight and flocked to him, Herod feared that the powerful influence which he exercised over men’s minds—for they seemed ready for any action which he advised—might lead to some form of revolt. He therefore decided to put him to death before any revolution arose through him. To forestall events appeared far better policy than a belated repentance when plunged in the turmoil of an insurrection. And so, through Herod’s suspicions, John was sent as a prisoner to Machærus, the fortress already mentioned, and there put to death. The Jews supposed that the destruction of Herod’s army was the penalty expressly inflicted upon him by God to avenge John....
The following extract supplies the name of “the daughter of Herodias” who appears in Mark vi. 22 ff.
Now Herodias their sister married Herod, the son of Herod the Great by Mariamne the daughter of Simon the high priest. They had a daughter Salome, after whose birth Herodias, in defiance of our country’s laws, married Herod, the Tetrarch of Galilee and half-brother of her husband, during the lifetime of her husband, whom she divorced. Her daughter Salome married Philip, the Tetrarch of Trachonitis and son of Herod.—Ant. XVIII. 5. 1 f., 4 (109-119, 136 f.).