Chapter 12

The characters of Herod and Augustus were as far apart as their
capitals. Extremes of temperament were in these two. The Roman was
cold, calm, of unfailing prudence; the Jew hot-blooded, reckless, and
warmed by a word into startling and frank ferocity. The one was keen
and delicate, the other blunt and robust. The emperor was a fox, the
king a lion. Herod and his people were now worried with mutual
distrust. He had no faith in any man, and no man--not even the emperor
by whose sufferance he held the crown--had any faith in him. The king
feared the people and the people feared the king.

Herod began his career with good purposes. An erect, powerful, and
handsome youth of Arabic and Idumaean blood, brave with lance and
charger, he raided the bandit chieftain Hezekias and slew him, with all
his followers. The Sanhedrim thought not of his valor but only of the
ancient law he had broken. They put him on trial for usurping the
power of life and death. In the midst of his peril he escaped, taking
with him the seed of those dark revenges which, when he got the crown,
destroyed all save a single member of the old court of justice and the
confidence of his people.

His household became the scene of bloody intrigues which even stirred
the tongue of Caesar with contempt. Herod became the dupe of a
designing sister, of base flatterers, and of an evil and ambitious son.
They undermined his confidence in all who deserved it. His beloved
wife Mariamne, his two sons Alexander and Aristobulus, and many others
of exceptional good repute in the kingdom were unjustly put to death.
Then, swiftly, as he penetrated the maze of plot and counterplot, those
who had fooled him began to fall before his wrath. He was now, indeed,
a forlorn, loveless, and terrible creature.

Many thought him afflicted with madness. There were noble folk in
Jerusalem who said they had seen the body of Mariamne embalmed in
honey, above the king's chamber, where every day he could look upon it.
Some had seen him wandering about the palace at night with a candle,
mourning over his loss and raging at his own folly. Some had seen him
so shaken by remorse that he roared like a lion goaded by hunger and
the lance. At such a time it was, indeed, a peril to come before him.
Plots against his life had worried him, and, distrusting his helpers,
he was wont to go about the city in disguise seeking information.
Twice he had forgiven Antipater, his favorite son, for crimes in the
royal household.

Now, in his seventy-sixth year, the king was, indeed, sorely pressed
with trouble. Jerusalem was the centre of a plot formidable and
far-reaching. Its object was, in part, clear to him, or so he thought,
and with some reason. It seemed to aim at his removal