The Jewish War: Second half of Book 1

[cahn]

Last week: Some really interesting discussions on (among other things) Caesar Augustus, the temple in Egypt, and the destruction of the temple (in Jerusalem) as divine punishment and also free will.

This week: More Herod! Definitely went quite a bit faster than last week! Featuring lots and lots of family drama... the kind that includes a ton of bloodshed. I'll talk more about it in comments.

Next week: selenak can you give us a halfway point for Book 2? It looks a bit shorter but I'm also going to be crunched for time next week (and definitely won't be able to post until Sunday) so half a book is what it's going to have to be!

Comments

[cahn]

Okay, so, I feel like "Herod has a ton of family drama in which he kills a lot of people, especially his family" pretty much sums it up, so I will just talk about random bits, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with the story.

Beginning with the very first bit I read (445) after Mariamme was killed: [Herod's] sons inherited their [murdered] mother's anger, and in view of this blood on his hands began to regard their father as an enemy -- you THINK, Herod??

468: [Antipater], though, exceptionally subtle operator that he was, knew how to keep his mouth shut, and used all his cunning to conceal his hatred for his brothers, while they, in their upper-class way, would give tongue to every thought as soon as it entered their head. Hee, I find that interesting that the lack of cunning is considered "upper-class"?

470: Antipater's own friends were either inherently leak-proof to a man, or had been bribed to reveal no secrets: and indeed Antipater's whole life could fairly be described as a mystery cult of iniquity. Wow! That's, uh, some description! (Kudos again to the translator. I need more opportunities to use the phrase "mystery cult of iniquity.")

507: Archelaus says to Herod when trying to get him less mad: Kingdoms were like obese human bodies -- there was always some member or other swelling up from the weight imposed on it, but that was no cause for amputation: milder treatment would cure it. That is... sure... a simile which I have never thought of before. Also of course never have I ever been in a situation where anyone I know has been, er, considering the amputation of various relatives.

....In Josephus' rendition, Herod seems very... susceptible... to whoever is trash-talking whomever of his family.

556: On one occasion Herod had called a meeting of his privy councillors and senior officials, presented [the orphan kids of Alexander and Aristobulus] before them, and with tears in his eyes addressed them as follows: 'Some malign power has made me lose the fathers of these children.'. HOLY DEFLECTION BATMAN. YOU. YOU, HEROD. YOU ARE THE MALIGN POWER. ...I may have been a most unfortunate father, but I shall try at least to prove a more protective grandfather... Let's just pass right through that "unfortunate" bit and just be like... well, you couldn't be LESS protective, I guess... although...

562: Herod did indeed have nine wives -- the footnote says, "apart from Mariamme, executed in 29 BC." I somehow find this sort of horribly hilarious. Sorry, Mariamme, not only did you get executed but you don't even make Josephus' list of wives!

571: Herod... accused [Pheroras' wife] also of.. using drugs to condition his brother against him. This reminds me of that bit in the Odyssey where Helen decides to drug everyone. Did people really know enough about drugs to do this, or was this just one of those things, like witchcraft in the 1600s, that people thought was possible but really wasn't?

Anyway, then he pretty much kills everyone else too!

665: When he died... In most respects his career was blessed by good fortune (*) as great as any man's -- he gained a throne as a commoner, kept it for all those years, and bequeathed it to his own children: but in his family life he was a paradigm of misfortune. The footnote at (*) says, "a remarkable assertion following the long narrative of disasters to which Josephus has just treated his readers." Which I found funny because (as Josephus actually says!) all the disasters are basically his family, he didn't get captured by enemies or assassinated by enemies or anything like that, I agree with Josephus, compared to all the king-types from last week, Herod's actual career as a king (discounting his family life) seems to actually have been pretty fortunate??

[cenozoicsynapsid]

One thing that struck me was just how much money Herod can throw around. His income seems to be on the order of a few thousand talents a year--- enough to bankroll his son with 300 talents to buy political patronage in Rome, bribe invading armies about the same amount to go away, build extensively and finance his own lavish lifestyle.

A talent is 6000 denarii, and a denarius (as the parable of the vineyard from the NT reminds us) is a generous day's wage for a laborer or soldier. So one talent is enough to pay a Roman legion-sized military unit (~4500 men) for one day in the field, not counting the extras required for officers, NCOs, and whatever supplies the men don't pay for themselves. Paying such a unit 300 talents to go away seems vaguely reasonable, as that amount could replace a year's worth of wages. Of course they'd all make much more if they got to sack something, but that also involves the possibility of being killed.

As far as I can tell, Herod makes almost all this money from taxes. The balsam trees at Ein Gedi are mentioned as an export item, but when Cleopatra steals them, Herod is able to rent them back for 200 talents yearly, so they can't bring in much more than that. And I don't think Judea has many more export goods, unlike Egypt which is a famous breadbasket.

This makes some sense with the NT's preoccupation with taxes and tax collectors. I had assumed that this was based on post-Herodian Roman tax collection--- Roman taxes were collected by private contractors who had no set tax rate, but bid on the tax concession for a province and then extracted as much as they could get, so they were understandably unpopular. But Herod seems to have been pretty extortionate himself. (And although the text doesn't say so, there would've been temple taxes as well, I think.)

But you can definitely see Herod's policies working out for him, as he seems to get several privileges that other Roman client kings don't necessarily get. (Such as permission to execute his family members, sadly.) Throwing around all this money seems to let him play both sides: He can appear as a powerful and civilized Hellenic king, while also doing enough for the temple and the Jews that they only seem to begrudge him his Hellenism once during the chapter, in that incident with the eagle statue. Considering what the next several Roman emperors (Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero) are going to do to their own family members, Herod is actually not doing as horribly as all that. Or rather, the bar is really, really low.