During Herod’s absence Joseph frequently visited the queen, and at these visits would dilate upon the love borne to her by her royal husband. At one time, with marvellous indiscretion, he let out the fatal secret of the command which he had received from the king, telling her that so dear was she to Herod, that as he could not live without her, so he was resolved that death should not part them. The queen could not readily forget or forgive such a proof of a husband’s affection.
Herod having advanced so far on his path of guilt, waded yet deeper and deeper in crime. The aged Hyrcanus was now living quietly and honourably at Seleucia. The Jews beyond the Euphrates respected him as their king and high priest, notwithstanding the cruel measure which his nephew had taken to incapacitate him from holding the latter office. Hyrcanus had been the friend of Herod’s father, Antipater; he had been the benefactor of Herod himself, and had bestowed his own grand-daughter upon him. But Hyrcanus was a descendant of Asmoneus; he had once sat upon the throne of Judea; and, notwithstanding his age and unambitious temper, might possibly ascend it again. This was sufficient to seal his doom. Neither gratitude, the social tie, nor respect for his gray hairs, could win mercy for the venerable prince. Herod enticed Hyrcanus to Jerusalem; falsely accused him of conspiring against him; and under this pretence took the life of his benefactor, after he had passed the eightieth year of his age.
Mariamne now regarded with ill-concealed aversion him who had caused the death of her nearest relations, and who had meditated her own. The contempt in which the high-born Jewess held the family of the Idumean drew upon her the bitter hatred of his mother Cyprus, and his sister Salome; and they did all in their power to induce Herod to destroy his beautiful wife. The Asmonean princess hung but by a thread over the gulf into which so many of her race had been plunged; that thread was the passionate love of a capricious tyrant; and it was at length snapped asunder by her own unguarded expression of the just indignation which boiled in her breast. Bitterly Mariamne reproached the murderer, who was unworthy the name of her husband, and taunted him with the command which he had secretly given for her death in the event of his own.
Herod was stung to rage and fury, his love was changed for the time into hate, and the wicked Salome took advantage of his anger to ruin the woman whom she detested. Mariamne was falsely accused of a design to poison her husband, the father of her children. The fair young queen was brought to trial for her life; and her judges, suborned by her foes, sentenced her to be put to death.
Fearful was the struggle in the mind of Herod between his passionate love for Mariamne, and the fierce anger which possessed his soul. But Cyprus and Salome, like tempting fiends, urged him forward on his path of blood. They suggested that, if the Asmonean princess were spared, the people might rise in her behalf; and the miserable Herod was at length induced to order the execution of the fatal sentence.
The spirit of the descendant of the heroic Mattathias sustained her to the last. The queen of Judea with calm courage saw the end approaching of a life which had been crowded with so many trials; though she must have sighed at the thought of her two young sons, left under the guidance of a father who was the destroyer of their mother. As, with a firm step and an unblanched cheek, the queen proceeded to the place of execution, her bitter cup was yet further imbittered by the unnatural conduct of Alexandra, her own mother. This unprincipled woman, dreading that she herself might become the next victim of the murderer of her son and her daughter, thought to avert Herod’s wrath by loading the queen with cruel reproaches. Mariamne bore this last trial in dignified silence, and passed on to her death great, firm, and fearless to the end, 28 b.c.
Herod’s rage being quenched in the blood of his innocent wife, all his affection towards her revived. Half maddened by remorse and despair, he had no rest by day or by night. The remembrance of Mariamne haunted him where-ever he went, and in transports of grief he called aloud upon the name of her whom his blind fury had destroyed. A grievous pestilence raged at this time in the land, which carried off great numbers of the people, and which was regarded as the just retribution of Heaven for the guiltless blood of the queen.
The health of Herod gave way under the pressure of his misery. While he lay sick, prostrated both in body and mind, Alexandra, seizing the favourable moment, made a plot which, if successful, would have placed in her hands both power and the means of vengeance. Her design was discovered and frustrated, and the execution of the mother soon followed that of her unfortunate daughter.
Herod had now become the object of the just detestation of the people. He endeavoured to soften their resentment for his crimes, and perhaps to quiet his own tortured conscience, by expending immense sums upon the [temple at Jerusalem]. For many years he employed eighteen thousand workmen upon the building. The outside was adorned profusely with gold, and the pinnacles, glittering in the sun, dazzled the eyes of admiring beholders.
But that the miserable Herod had not brought to God the offering of a broken and contrite heart, more precious than all the world’s vain treasures—that his remorse was not repentance, was proved by his subsequent conduct.