Herodias, reclining at his left, had changed position to rest her head on her right arm and thereby avoid somewhat breathing the heavily alcoholic exhalations of her spouse; she lay facing her daughter.
Claudia, Herod’s guest of honor, was at his right, and next to her, as the ranking Roman soldier at Machaerus, Herod had placed the Centurion Cornelius. Other guests, in various stages of intoxication, sat or reclined on their elbows or had fallen inert on their couches to the right and left of the Tetrarch.
The banquet had begun in the daylight of late afternoon, and by the time the sun had dropped behind the western headlands the Tetrarch and his guests had begun to be surfeited with the richly tempting food, the wine, and the wildly sensual dancing of Herod’s darkly handsome Arabian women, who, nude but for gossamer thin, gaily colored loincloths, writhed and twisted in the open square before the tables to the oriental, whining insistence of the strings and the maddeningly rhythmical beat of the drums.
But now the dancers, their copper-hued perspiring bodies shining as though they had been rubbed with olive oil, had retired to a chamber adjoining the banquet room. From there they could come prancing out barefoot, with lewd twistings and contortings, at the first summons of the musicians. Until Antipas should arouse from his stupor, though, and call for them, they would be free to relax.
Cornelius, who had been eying the Tetrarch, nodded in his direction. “If we could get his head down flat,” he said to Claudia, “he’d be asleep until morning, and we could leave. Wouldn’t you like to get away?”
“Yes. I’m gorged. And I’d like to have a breath of fresh air on the terrace. Perhaps Herodias would excuse us. I had no idea that Antipas....”
But at that instant the Tetrarch’s head slipped from its cradling hand, and he fell face downward upon the cushion. The sudden drop awakened him, and he twisted his legs around heavily and sat up. The leader of the musicians, seeing him, signaled his men to begin playing and motioned to the dancers to return.
“No! No!” shouted the Tetrarch. “We have had enough of their dancing! But now, my friends”—Antipas faced right and left to look along the couches, as his guests began to sit up—“I shall provide you with more novel entertainment.” He paused and reached for his wine goblet. “I ask your pardon for having gone to sleep, although I’m sure a number of you did likewise. During our stay at Machaerus I have been overindulging in food and wine and, for a man of my age, certainly, other more strenuous pleasures.” He ran his thick tongue over his greasy lips and smiled lewdly. “But now”—he signaled two of the guards standing at the doorway opening upon the terrace—“go into the dungeon and fetch to our birthday feast the Wilderness prophet.”
Herodias whirled about to confront him, her countenance betraying both anger and amazement. “Why should the Tetrarch bring that depraved madman here to insult his guests, his wife, and himself? Has the Tetrarch permitted too much wine and too many women...?”
“Patience, my dear! And be calm. I am not having him brought before us to insult us. On the contrary, he will ask our pardon for his intemperate words, and we shall release him.”