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"With the shadow of a haunted midnight creeping over his icy heart, he sullenly rode
on to Jerusalem. When he arrived he boldly advanced to salute his father, who met him
with the stern words:
`Even this marks a parricide, to wish to get me into his arms, while under
such heinous accusations! God confound thee, vile wretch! Touch me not, till
thou hast cleared thyself'."
A forged letter incriminating Salome was found in the possession of Antipater's
slaves, and Herod was now haunted by the thought that the letters that had led to the
death of his two sons might have been forged also. What a nightmare of blood and
intrigue!
Herod now sank into a veritable Gehenna of misery:
"The distemper seized his whole body, and greatly disordered all its parts with various
symptoms" (Josephus).
He was carried back from Jericho to Jerusalem, and there "in his madness, he ordered
Salome to summon all the chiefs of the Jews, to have them shut up in the Hippodrome,
and then to send his soldiers and massacre them all, that his funeral might be
accomplished with the genuine lamentations of the whole people who hated him". His
son Antipater, believing that Herod was dead, bribed the jailor, with immense promises,
to set him free. On hearing of this, Herod roared with a terrible voice, "Then kill him at
once, and bury him ignobly in the Hyrcanium". Five days later Herod himself died. We
are glad to record that, on the order of Salome, the Jewish nobles were set free from the
Hippodrome.
Such was the state of affairs when there was born at Bethlehem the infant Christ.
"In the very year stained by the tragic abominations which we have narrated, the
angels sang above His cradle their divine song of `Glory to God in the highest; on earth
peace, goodwill toward men'."