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

[selenak]

Great point about Herod's financials. (And let's not forget, he also was also building all those palaces, temples, fortresses, theatres and cities. Can't have been cheap, either. Even assuming part of the work is done by slaves/serfs.)

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.

Augustus has entered the chat and would not like us to point out he started with the family members abuse and killing when it comes to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he just got way better PR for it. At the very least, he banished his daughter Julia to an island for having lovers (while simultanously, according to the same biography by Suetonius, being into deflowering virgins as an older man), banished his granddaughter Julia the Younger for the same given reason (while curiously punishing her husband harder (death) than her supposed lover (exile, and not to an island but to nice and comfy Massilia), leading more than one conspiracy theorist sideeying the justification here), after having ordered said granddaughter's baby to be exposed due to being the product of adultery. As the "I, Claudius" tv show had Tiberius retort when Agrippina the older (sister to the banished granddaughter and aunt to the murdered baby) accuses him of persecuting the descendants of Augustus: "Which descendants of Augustus do I persecute which he himself hasn't also persecuted?"
In addition to these certainties, there's also the question mark over the death of grandson Agrippa Postumus. Augustus' last order? Tiberius' first one? Livia? Even the most anti Tiberius sources throw up their hands, and I could see Augustus the ultimate cold pragmatist deciding he doesn't want a succession crisis and between Postumus and Tiberius, Tiberius is clearly the more qualified, so....

As for Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero having a higher body count when it comes to killing and abusing family members than Herod, my first guess would be only Tiberius and Nero are serious competition, but let's see.

Tiberius: May or may not be responsible for the death of Agrippa Postumus (see above). Definitely is held responsible for his ex wife and stepsister Julia being starved to death after the death of Augustus by some sources. Question mark over the death of nephew and adopted son Germanicus, but even the most anti Tiberius sources were never able to find proof. Definitely responsible for the deaths of Germanicus and Agrippina the Older's first two sons, Nero and Drusus, and of Agrippina the Older herself though will blame Sejanus for it after Sejanus' fall. (But Tiberius, I'm with Suetonius on this one: even if it was Sejanus' idea, you were Emperor, he was your right hand man, ergo you are responsible.) Said deaths occured after banishment to islands and incarceration respectively and also involved starvation. All the other deaths and abuses he's responsible for weren't of family members.

Caligula: ordered cousin and adopted brother Tiberius Gemmellus killed. Ordered widowed brother-in-law and possible boyfriend executed when said guy supposedly had joined a conspiracy against him with his (Caligula's) surviving sister Agrippina the Younger and Julia 3. Notably did not order his sisters to be be executed but banished them to islands, by then the go to measure against women in this family, I suppose. And that's it for Gaius C. in terms of family members. I'm not a Caligula Revisionist claiming all his misdeeds were postumous propaganda, but all the other deaths he's responsible for really were those of other people. There is of course the incest accusation (i.e. him and all three of his sisters, with Drusilla as his fave, and him and Drusilla's husband, the later possible conspirator), but as Emma Southon points out in her Agrippina the Younger biography, incest was the go to accusation against tyrants in the Roman world. Note that he did not, repeat, did not kill Drusilla via attempted Caesarean section the way he does in "I, Claudius" even in the most garish ancient sources, that was Robert Graves' invention. The ancients have Drusilla die by natural causes and Caligula going completely bonkers over it.

Claudius: had a lot more people killed than his Gravesian image would have you believe, but no family members with the notable exception of his wife Messalina after she was caught red handed marrying someone else. Did banish his niece Julia for having an affair with Seneca, supposedly. Married his other niece Agrippina the Younger for which ancient historians are quick to blame her and Claudius' freedman, to which I say: Claudius was an adult in full possession of his mental facilities. Now it's possible they never ever had sex, I suppose, and that it was originally mainly a way to prevent Agrippina, the last direct blood descendant of Augustus together with her son (while Claudius had no biological connection to Augustus at all, "only" to Livia) from marrying someone else who could then be a potential rival, but still: they were married for years and years, and thus the Julio-Claudians (literally - Agrippina the Younger as the Julian and Claudius as the Claudian) most likely to have had incestuous sex.

Nero: Tiberius' sole true competitor in terms of family slaughter. Did kill his cousin and adopted brother Britannicus, his mother Agrippina the Younger, his cousin and first wife Octavia. May or may not have been responsible for the death of his second wife Pooppea (depending on whether or not he truly kicked her in the stomach when she was pregnant). Did kill one of his aunts in order to get his hands on her cash according to the ancients.

Meanwhile Herod: three sons and one wife executed for sure, also a brother-in-law and a father-in-law. So basically, fits right in with Tiberius and Nero, worse score than either Caligula and Claudius (on that front).

(Meanwhile Cleopatra, presented by Josephus as a serial killer of family members: was still a child when her father and oldest sister duked it out with the end result of her oldest sister getting executed by Dad, for which 11 years old Cleo was not responsible; Dad dies of natural causes (rare in a Ptolemy); Cleopatra ends up in a civil war with younger brother Ptolemy XII which the (anti-Cleopatra) sources say his advisers started, not her, and which ends with him dead after losing a battle against the Romans. Which leaves younger sister Arsinoe and younger brother Ptolemy XIII. Arsinoe has sided with Ptolemy XII, gets imprisoned, and all sources agree that Cleopatra is responsible for getting her executed years later. Whether Ptolemy XIII died of poison or natural causes is a question mark. Which means one, possible two dead siblings Cleopatra is directly responsible for, three if you count Ptolemy XII which in a war that he (or well, his advisors) started shouldn't be counted the same way as execution of a prisoner, I'd say. But sure, of all these people, Cleopatra is the one into family serial killing.

Back to Herod: what I do find interesting is that he, even in his last years, is NOT accused of incest. Because you can bet that if Suetonius was writing this book, he'd have made Herod/Salome a thing, at least by insinuation. Is the difference Josephus isn't that into combining bloodshed with incest as Roman historians are when painting someone was a tyrant?