But the Romans likewise knew and consciously exploited Herod’s unpopularity. Strabo states that the humiliating execution of Antigonus was intended to decrease the prestige of the latter and increase that of Herod.[[288]] Josephus and the Talmud would be ample evidences themselves of the hatred and the bitter antagonism with which Herod was regarded.[[289]] None the less it may well be that the unpopularity was largely personal, and produced by the violence and cruelties of which Herod was guilty. It appears so in Strabo’s account. Idumean descent cannot have been the principal reproach directed against Herod by his subjects. On more than one occasion the Idumeans had evinced their attachment to the Jewish Law.[[290]] Nor was Herod wholly without ardent supporters. In the cities which he had founded there were many men devoted to him. Even—or perhaps especially—among the priests, there was a distinctly Herodian faction.[[291]] It is highly likely that hatred of Herod was especially strong in those who hated Rome as well, either through Parthian proclivities or because Rome seemed to present a danger to the maintenance of their institutions. And among these men were, it appears, most of those whose teachings have come down to us in the course of later tradition.
To the Romans this devotion of the Palestinian Jews to their Law seemed an excessive and even reprehensible thing. As we have seen, the Jews were qualified as superstitiosi, “superstitious” (above, p. [177]). In general, to be sure, zeal for ancestral institutions was supported by the Romans, and they were not particularly concerned that foreign institutions should resemble theirs. However, if there were any from which a breach of the peace was to be apprehended, they might be regarded as practices to be suppressed.
The Romans had shown for certain Jewish customs a very marked respect. The intense Jewish repugnance to images was at first difficult for Romans to realize, since they had been training themselves for generations to test the degree of civilization by the interest in the plastic arts. That there might be among barbarians no statues was natural enough: that the barbarians would refuse to take them when offered, was incomprehensible. But, hard though it was to realize, the Romans quickly enough did realize it. The capital concession of issuing no Roman coins for Judea with anything but the traditional symbols on them, of carefully eliminating those which bore the emperor’s effigy, undoubtedly showed their good-will in the matter.[[292]] And the fact may be noted that after the coins celebrating the triumph of Vespasian and Titus, with the Latin and Greek legends Ἰουδαίας Ἑαλωκυίας, Iudaea capta, “For the Conquest of Judea,” no Roman coins with imperial effigies appear till the radical reorganization by Hadrian. That indicated clearly enough the extent to which the Romans were willing to respect what was to them a purely irrational prejudice.
One other matter was easier for Romans to comprehend, and that was the inviolable sanctity of certain things and places. It was a common enough conception that certain places were unapproachable to all but a few, ἄδυτα; and that certain things, like the Palladium, suffered profanation from the slightest touch. They submitted accordingly with a good grace to exclusion from most of the temple precincts, and Nero[[293]] readily gave his consent to the building of the wall that prevented Agrippa II from turning the temple ceremonies into a show for his courtiers. The punishment of a Roman soldier, who tore a scroll of the Pentateuch, is another case in point. The soldier may have been a Syrian enrolled from the section in which he served, and not properly a Roman at all. None the less an arbitrary and distinctly unsympathetic procurator felt his responsibility for threatened disorders keenly enough to make this drastic example.[[294]]
Herod had kept order. He had done so with a high hand, and had met with frequent rebellions. Himself wholly inclined to complete Hellenization, he had made many efforts to conciliate his Jewish subjects. His lust for building he gratified only in the pagan cities subject to him. His coins bear no device except the inanimate objects and vegetable forms allowed by law and tradition. With cautious regard to certain openly expressed fears on the part of the Jews, he rebuilt the temple on a magnificent scale. He spoke of the Israelites as “our ancestors.”[[295]] As has been said, he did not wholly want adherents among priests and people. That he died as an embittered and vindictive despot, conscious of being generally detested, and contriving fiendish plots to make his death deplored, is probable enough, and is amply explained by the domestic difficulties with which he had to contend all his life.[[296]]
In some cases at least, it was his zeal for orderly administration that caused friction with the people. His law sentencing burglars to foreign slavery is an instance (Jos. Ant. XVI. i. 1). In general, however, the mere suppression of more or less organized brigandage was a task that took all his attention, but this “brigandage” was often a real attempt at revolution, in which popular teachers were suspected of being implicated, and every such suppression carried with it in its train a series of executions that did not increase the king’s popularity.
These “robbers” or “brigands” were of different types. The distinction which Roman lawyers made between war proper, iustum bellum, and brigandage, latrocinium, was in Syria and the surrounding regions rather quantitative than qualitative. So, after Herod’s first defeat by the Arabians, “he engaged in robberies,” τοὐντεῦθεν ὁ μὲν Ἡρώδης ληστείαις ἐχρῆτο (Jos. Ant. XV. v. 1), which meant only that he made short incursions into the enemy’s country, until he had the strength to attempt another pitched battle. So also of the Trachonitians (ibid. XVI. ix. 3). Every one of the expeditions in which the Hasmonean rulers had increased their dominions had been in the eyes of the Syrian historians “robberies.” Itureans and other Syrians had been guilty of them under the last Seleucids.[[297]] In the prologue to Pompeius Trogus’ Thirty-ninth Book, as contained in Justin’s epitome,[[298]] we hear the conquests of John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannai described as latrocinia. And again (xl. 2) we read that Pompey refused the petition of Antiochus, son of Cyzicenus, to be called king of Syria, on the ground that Antiochus had miserably shirked his responsibilities for eleven years, and he, Pompey, would not give him what he could not maintain, “lest he should again expose Syria to Jewish and Arabian brigands,” ne rursus Syriam Iudaeorum et Arabum latrociniis infestam reddat.
Herod had kept these robbers in check, and had effectually fulfilled his tacit engagement to the populus Romanus. His death immediately removed the strong hand. His son Archelaus found an insurrection on his hands almost at once, which he suppressed with great bloodshed. The moment he left for Rome to maintain his claims to a part of this inheritance, the governor of Syria suppressed another revolt; and hardly had he turned his back, when his procurator Sabinus found himself surrounded by a determined band of rebels recruited principally from Galilee, Idumaea, Jericho, and the trans-Jordan territory. In spite of a successful sortie by the Romans, Sabinus was nothing less than besieged in the Tower of Phasael.
Innumerable (μύριοι) disorders, Josephus tells us (Ant. XVII. x. 4), occurred at about the same time. Some two thousand of Herod’s soldiers engaged, as was so often the case, in plunder on their own account. Sepphoris in Galilee was seized and plundered by Judah, son of the highwayman (αρχιληστής) Hezekiah, who made the neighboring country dangerous with his band of “madmen” (ἀπονενοημένοι). At Jericho Simon, a former slave of Herod, had himself proclaimed king and sacked the palace there. But more serious than these was the band of outlaws commanded by four brothers, of whom only Athronges is mentioned. These attacked both the local troops and even Roman detachments and were not suppressed till much later.[[299]]
All these disorders required the presence of Varus[[300]] once more. He marched on Jerusalem at the head of an army, turning over the various towns on his route to be sacked by his Arabian allies, precisely as both British and French used their Indian allies during the colonial wars in America.