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treated Salome with contempt, and said that when her husband became king, he would
reduce the whole Idumaean family to the obscurity out of which they had emerged by
their allegiance with the Asmonaean princes.
Salome now played upon Herod's fears in connection with his past crimes, and
poisoned his mind against his sons, whom she represented as being rivals for the throne.
In order to remind his two sons that they had an elder brother, Herod took back his
divorced wife Doris, and summoned his son, Antipater, back to the court.
"Antipater soon showed himself to be even worse than Salome--`a mystery of
iniquity'--a demon incarnate of villainy and guile. None but an oriental of the worst
nature, exacerbated by past wrongs, and with his heart swollen to bursting with
venomous hate and inordinate ambition, could possibly have played with such infernal
skill the part which Antipater now assumed."
In B.C.13 Antipater was sent to Rome to receive the same advantages as his brothers
had enjoyed. "By his letters and subtle insinuations, he brought the weary king to such a
state of frenzy as at last induced him to sail to Rome with his two sons, with the intention
of procuring their punishment at the hands of Augustus." Nothing but the good sense of
Augustus saved them, and disentangled the web of lies that had been woven around them.
Back again at Jerusalem, however, the villainy of Antipater soon accomplished their ruin.
Slaves were tortured and made to "confess", what was required of them, and as a result
the elder son Alexander was thrown into prison. From prison Alexander wrote a letter
involving Salome and the whole court.
About this time, in enforcing his demands against the Arabians, Herod overstepped
the mark and incurred a reprimand from Augustus. At the same time he again petitioned
Augustus for leave to put his two sons to death--a letter that cost Herod a kingdom. The
two sons were soon after strangled, in the place where Herod had married their mother.
An old soldier named Teron, and three hundred others, were executed for raising a
protest. When Augustus heard of it, he said that he would greatly prefer to be Herod's
pig (hus) rather than Herod's son (huios). This saying Macrobius associates with the
massacre of the infants at Bethlehem.
The wheels that work within wheels now bring together the sect of the Pharisees, the
growing expectation of a Messiah even in the heathen world, and the family affairs of
Herod. Pheroros, Herod's brother, was a Pharisee, and the Pharisees had wished to make
him king. About this time Pheroros fell ill and was visited by Herod. Touched by this
visit, he ordered his wife to fling into the fire the poison that Antipater had supplied for
Herod's murder. Doris was accused, and the slaves of Pheroros tortured. Pheroros' wife
confessed, and flung herself from the roof of the palace. The fall, however, did not prove
fatal, and she confessed to Herod about the poison. When it was discovered that
Mariamne had been in the plot, she was divorced, her father the High Priest deposed, and
Matthias made High Priest in his place. Doris sent a secret letter warning Antipater, but
the slaves conveying it were caught.