In the meantime his disorder had made rapid progress. A slow fire seemed to consume his vital parts. His appetite became ravenous, but he dared not gratify it on account of dreadful pains and internal ulcers, which preyed on the lower parts of his body. Moreover his breathing became difficult, and violent spasms convulsed his frame, and imparted supernatural strength to his limbs[133]. But in spite of these accumulated sufferings he still clung to life, and cherishing hopes of recovery caused himself to be conveyed across the Jordan to Callirrhoë[134], hoping to obtain relief from its warm bituminous baths. Arrived there, the physicians advised that he should be fomented with warm oil. For this purpose, he was lowered into a vessel filled with that fluid, when his eyes relaxed, and he suddenly fell back as if dead. Roused, however, by the cries of his physicians, he revived, and was conveyed back to Jericho, where, as if defying death, he devised a new atrocity. Knowing the joy his death would cause, he gave instructions that the men of distinction from every town in Judæa should be assembled in the hippodrome, and secretly confided to Salome his pleasure that they should be butchered immediately upon his decease, that thus his funeral might at least be signalized by a real mourning.
He had scarcely given these orders, when his messengers returned from Rome, and announced the ratification of the sentence against Antipater. Instantly the tyrant’s desire for life revived, but being as quickly followed by a sudden racking pain, he called for an apple and a knife, and in an unguarded moment tried to stab himself. He might have succeeded had not an attendant seized his hand. The clamour that followed reached the ears of Antipater, who was in bonds in a neighbouring apartment. Thinking his father was dead, he made a desperate effort to escape by bribing his guards. Informed of this Herod instantly ordered a spearman to dispatch him on the spot. Antipater having thus paid the penalty of his life of treachery, the king once more amended his will, nominated his eldest son Archelaus as his successor to the throne, and appointed Antipas tetrarch of Galilee and Peræa, Herod Philip tetrarch of Auranitis, Trachonitis, and Batanæa, and Salome mistress of Jamnia and some other towns. Five days more of excruciating agony remained to the tyrant, and then he expired[135], after a reign of 34 years.
PART V.
RETROSPECT AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER I.
DISPERSION OF THE JEWS—RISE OF SYNAGOGUES.
ARRIVED at the threshold of the Gospel History, it may not be amiss to survey some of the more prominent features of the period we have traversed, and to notice some of the changes which it had produced on the Jewish nation.
The influences under which the Jews had been brought since the Captivity were, as we have seen, of a very varied character. For two centuries after that event, they were subject to the dominion of Persia; for nearly a century and a half they were under Greek rulers; for a century they enjoyed independence under their native Asmonean princes; and for more than half a century, while nominally ruled by the family of Herod, were really in subjection to the power of Rome[136].
In the present Chapter we shall notice, (a) The Wide Dispersion of the Jews, (b) The Change in their Vernacular Language, and (c) The rise of Synagogues.
(a) The Wide Dispersion of the Jews.
About the time of the building of Rome the ten tribes were carried away by the Assyrian monarchs, and 130 years after, this event was followed by the removal of their brethren of Judah and Benjamin to Babylon. The influential results of this earliest migration, it has been observed, “may be inferred from the fact, that about the time of the battles of Marathon (B.C. 490) and Salamis (B.C. 480), a Jew was the minister, another Jew the cupbearer, and a Jewess the consort, of a Persian monarch[137].” Once settled under the shadow of the Babylonian and Persian kings, the Jews were very loth to quit the country of their adoption, and comparatively few availed themselves of the permission of Cyrus to return to their native land. The important colony in Babylonia which afterwards exerted a very remarkable influence, threw off shoots which extended to the borders of the Caspian Sea and the confines of China.