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

[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."