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! ETA: Death of Emperor Claudius!

Comments

[selenak]

Herod vs Nero: come on. Are three sons really that much worse than a mother, a wife, possibly another wife with unborn baby, a stepbrother and an aunt? Well, okay, if we limit it to people he actually loved (as Herod had loved Mariamne and presumably at least at first his sons), then I guess we have limit it his mother and possibly wife 2 and unborn baby, since he disliked the rest. Which then comes down to whether matricide or infanticide is worse, I guess? ;)

But do you think Josephus is trying to paint Herod as a) a tyrant, or as b) someone who was a good king but a really really lousy relative, or c) does he actually buy Herod's lines about how unfortunate he is? I kind of got the vibes of (b), but I guess I'd believe either of the others.

I believe that’s still debated among scholars, not least because Josephus had another go at Herod in the Antiquities which is even darker? (Haven’t read it yet - I only know excerpts from the Antiquities - so I may have osmosed wrongly.) However, thanks to Mildred and your generous self I read a lot of Plutarch and Suetonius in recent months, and it’s worth pointing out that Josephus (who wrote the “Jewish War” before either man wrote their famous works, but presumably like them had earlier, lost historical works to model himself on as a historian) is following a similar pattern with Herod than they do in their biographies of people with, shall we say, mixed records. The most famous example is Suetonius’ Caligula biography where he first writes lots of praise for Caligula’s Dad Germanicus, then sketches the horror show that was the fate of Germanicus’ widow Agrippina the Elder and her two oldest sons under Tiberius, then outlines Caligula’s early years, ascendancy, some questionable but lots of good measures at the start of his reign, and then says “So much for the man. The rest is the story of the monster”, and we get the horror show of mad misdeeds. Or Suetonius’ Tiberius biography, which goes “Tiberius: hard working, underappreciated good guy and Roman patriot” for the first half and then “Tiberius: senile tyrant and child rapist” in the second. The second half, i.e. the part all about their bad deeds, still includes the subjects of the biography going “woe is me” a la Herod presenting his grandsons, for example when Tiberius after the fall of his now ex bff and sidekick Sejanus (that’s Patrick Stewart’s role in the tv version of “I, Claudius”, btw, with an entire subplot about Claudius’ sister killing her husband so she can have more sex with Patrick Stewart) declaring how terribly bereft of his family he is due to that ingrate Sejanus, when he himself signed off on those abuse and death warrants.

One difference between Putarch and Suetonius, though, is that Suetonius presents the bad eggs among his Emperors in the final summations as having been hypocrites in those parts of their lives where they did laudable and good things, i.e. they were always bad, they just pretended to be good. Plutarch blames bad influences (usually by women and “flatterers” of either gender) when someone he originally presented as good or mostly good goes down the drain, instead of seeing them as always bad and just casting off their masks. If someone is truly mixed from the start, insisting on doing both admirable-to-Plutarch and deplorable-to-Plutarch deeds from beginning to end (say, Alcibiades or Antony), we still get what I’d call the good/bad angel model of there being a good influence (usually, but not always earlier on) (say, Socrates for Alcibiades), and those evil flatterers then doing their corruptive work.

Josephus while not a modern psychologian seems to go more in the Plutarch direction yet a bit more psychological. His Herod in “The Jewish War” isn’t bad from the start and just pretending to be good, he’s doing good and bad things sometimes simultanously (though they get presented separately, with the first half of book one featuring him in his rising statesman role mainly and the second half giving us the bloody soap opera of his family life), though there is no question he gets worse as the years progress, and the grand finale where he orders lots of men killed in the event of his death so his people will not celebrate but truly mourn (the order Salome doesn’t follow) and dies painfully and unmourned is the classic supervillain death. But we get a reminder of his regency’s success in the final summation instead of an all round condemnation. Like Plutarch there is lots of blame thrown on third parties scheming and flattering (in this case Antipater and Salome plus some less prominent folk), but the very fact Herod is listening to the evil advice (tm) and so gullible is a downside to his character for an ancient historian. (True virtuous Greek and Roman folk are presented as scornful of flattery and immune to evil advice.) So all in all, I would say b), yes.

[cenozoicsynapsid]

Nothing to add here but I really appreciate these comments on historians. It's been too long since I read any Suetonius and I never read Plutarch, so very glad to get this catchup.

[cahn]

then I guess we have limit it his mother and possibly wife 2 and unborn baby, since he disliked the rest.

LOL, I want to say something like, "who among us hasn't offed some of our relatives that we happened not to like that much? Cut him some slack!"

One difference between Putarch and Suetonius, though, is that Suetonius presents the bad eggs among his Emperors in the final summations as having been hypocrites in those parts of their lives where they did laudable and good things, i.e. they were always bad, they just pretended to be good. Plutarch blames bad influences (usually by women and “flatterers” of either gender) when someone he originally presented as good or mostly good goes down the drain, instead of seeing them as always bad and just casting off their masks. If someone is truly mixed from the start, insisting on doing both admirable-to-Plutarch and deplorable-to-Plutarch deeds from beginning to end (say, Alcibiades or Antony), we still get what I’d call the good/bad angel model of there being a good influence (usually, but not always earlier on) (say, Socrates for Alcibiades), and those evil flatterers then doing their corruptive work.

Ah, this is interesting!

and dies painfully and unmourned is the classic supervillain death.

Oh yeah, I am not motivated to find the footnote (my kindle version really has an awful footnote interface) but there was one that mentioned that Josephus was blaming Herod's ill health leading to his death on his supervillain-ness even though Herod was, like, 70 at the time...

But we get a reminder of his regency’s success in the final summation instead of an all round condemnation.

Yeah, I like that.

[selenak]

Mind you, I'm completely willing to believe Herod had been in ill health for some time (it would have contributed to his mood and paranoia) by the time of his death, but it's also a general literary trope then and now that evil tyrants have to do die either violently, or, if they do die of natural causes, off extremely painful illnesses with a suspicion of poison. I can understand the emotional need to believe that evil tyrants get punished SOMEHOW, but... given more recent centuries contain ample demonstrations of tyrants dying in bed without horrible pain beforehand, it does make one a tad sceptical whenever this occurs in ancient history.

BTW, this whole "tyrants must die a horribly painful death or else violently" trope makes me curious what to make of Alexander's death. Because on the one hand, he is THE role model for every conquest-minded monarch thereafter, the kingly pin-up of the ancient world. Some of the surviving historians - which, to remind you, are none of them contemporary, they write hundreds of years after the fact because none of the contemporary histories survive - are more critical than others, but he's still by and large presented as a heroic, positive figure, with any non-heroic traits in typical xenophobia being blamed on prolonged exposure to Persian cultural influence. On the other hand - his death as presented by ancient historians fits actually perfectly with the tyrant trope. It's prolonged and extremely painful, with some of the usual poison rumours, it comes after he's become increasingly isolated and prone to violent lashings out, and while in theory he leaves his Empire to a biological heir, in practice it splits apart almost immediately, and within the next two decades, his entire biological family will get wiped out by his own generals.

Alexander's death

[cahn]

huh, interesting! How does Plutarch treat the parallel between Alexander and whoever it is he's comparing Alexander to?

Re: Alexander's death

[selenak]

Wellllllll, the guy he's comparing Alexander to is one Caesar, Gaius Julius Caesar. Whose ending is one of the most famous deaths in history. Unfortunately, though, the direct comparison at the end of those lives has been lost. The editor of the edition with which you gifted me thinks:

"Whereas Alexander destroyed himself, Caesar is destroyed by forces outside himself which he cannot control Alexander is suspicious and harsh, seeing plot where they do not exists; Caesar is too forgiving of his former enemies and fails to take seriously warnings of a very real plot against his life. Alexander at the end of his life is increasingly superstitious; Caesar is dismissive of omens and warnings. In "Alexander" the pricise role, if any, played by the supernatural is left unclear. In "Caesar", on the other hand, Plutarch is unequivocal that the divine had a hand both in Caesar's murder and in the punishing of his murders."