Herod and his Historians
Gaius Iulius Herodes, better known as Herod the Great, ranks as one of the most famous Roman client kings. His reign, traditionally dated from 37 bce to his death in 4 bce,1 brought Judaea and its ruler onto the international stage at a time when the nature of the imperial power was itself being transformed. Herod’s close connection with key Roman politicians—Antony and Octavian not least—meant that the history of this small kingdom in the East became inextricably linked with the power-struggle at the heart of imperial government, and Herod’s skill in successfully negotiating this turbulence should not be underestimated. His kingship has, however, provoked considerable controversy in historical evaluations: this ostensible success on the international stage went hand in hand with familial carnage, and with a certain amount of antipathy from his own people in Judaea. Intense interest in writing the history of this paradoxical king has been stimulated by the fact that, unlike for other dependent rulers of the period, we have not one but two extensive accounts of Herod’s reign by one and the same classical author: Josephus.
Flavius Josephus, a Judaean living at Rome under the Flavians after the Great War, wrote prodigiously during his time in the capital. Of greatest note for our purposes are the Jewish War, detailing the build-up to and history of the Jewish revolt against Rome that resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce, and the Antiquities of the Jews, a twenty book account of the history of the Jewish people. In both
1 Aspects of this chronology have always been in dispute, and the thorough reinvestigation of all the relevant evidence by Mahieu 2012 leads to a rather different result, 36 bce to 1 ce. This causes several problems with ancient calculations of the lengths of both the reign of Herod (thirty-four years) and Archelaus (nine or ten years); this and other problems are pointed out by Sievers 2014 and Grabbe 2020, 29–31. In light of these arguments, we have retained the traditional chronology. For this book, the precise dating of events is usually of little concern.
Herod in History: Nicolaus of Damascus and the Augustan Context. Kimberley Czajkowski and Benedikt Eckhardt, Oxford University Press. © Kimberley Czajkowski and Benedikt Eckhardt 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192845214.003.0001
works, substantial space is given over to Herod: indeed, considering their purported subject matter, his reign constitutes an overly large proportion of both narratives.2 While we might expect consistency from the same author, and there is certainly some significant overlap, the accounts are also at times rather different in character. The king in the later work receives a rather more critical treatment as one who has deviated from the ancestral law, thus betraying god and his people and directly contributing to the vengeance that will come in the form of the Jews’ defeat in the Great War. It may of course be that Josephus had simply changed his opinion on Herod in the two decades that separate the works, and used his narrative in Antiquities to sculpt his developing understanding of both the causes of the war and the situation of the Jewish people more broadly.3 The Antiquities is also significantly longer, allowing him to include more information about his subject matter. But this poses another, possibly more significant question: whence did that information come?
Apart from possible developments of Josephus’ personality, this latter question may indeed be key. Most treatments of the varying portraits of Herod seek their explanations, at least in part, in Josephus’ reliance upon and reworking of rather different source material. The War is thought to have relied heavily on the work of Nicolaus of Damascus, Herod’s ‘court historian’ who is regarded as having written a strongly pro-Herodian, propagandist account; the more critical portrait in the Antiquities would in turn be the result of Josephus’ access to a wider variety of material by this point, which he then integrated into his narrative.4 Variants of this approach question the sole reliance on Nicolaus in War and allow for additional material from Nicolaus in the
2 The Herodian portion of the narrative takes up the majority of the lengthy Book 1 in the War (1.204–673), Books 14–17.199 of the twenty books of Antiquities. Toher 2003, 433 makes some speculations on comparable percentages in Antiquities and the Universal History of Nicolaus; Toher himself admits these may be ‘of no consequence’ and indeed we should not place any great weight on the coincidence.
3 For possibly the earliest example of such a view over and against source-critical explanations, see Laqueur 1920, 218, specifically on AJ 14, on the differences in Josephus’ views on the Herodians being due to his development as an author, ‘die ihn der national-jüdischen Anschauung näher gebracht hat.’
4 For example, Hölscher 1916 explained the difference as AJ being based on an antiHerodian, Jewish redactor of Nicolaus; Schürer 1901, 64–5 saw it as lying in the use of two sources for AJ—Nicolaus and an anti-Herodian. For more recent statements on this
longer narrative of Antiquities, but do not usually question the basic premise: that Nicolaus’ narrative was an apology for his king, whereas the negative traits of Herod’s reign derive from other sources.5
Whereas these other sources are only loosely defined as ‘internal Jewish tradition’, Nicolaus of Damascus is an anchor point in every analysis of the matter. Who was this Nicolaus, apparently so important in the construction of our surviving accounts of Herod; and, most pressingly, what exactly did he write about him? By revisiting Josephus’ text, perhaps we can go back to another Herod in History, one that may not have been quite such a straightforwardly encomiastic portrait as is still so often assumed.
Tracing Nicolaus
Nicolaus, son of Antipater and Stratonike, was born into an elite Damascene family in ca. 64 bce.6 He received a good education and became known as a peripatetic (F 132). We know a fair amount about his career, yet an exact timeline is frustratingly difficult to construct. He certainly moved into the courts of Eastern dynasts, acting as διδάσκαλος to Cleopatra and Antony’s children.7 There is some debate as to whether this was in the thirties at Alexandria (he might have acquired the position after Cleopatra became ruler of Damascus in 36 bce) or in the twenties at Rome, where the children were raised after the battle of Actium.8 There are problems with both suggestions. For the former, we encounter the fact that Plutarch, who knew of Nicolaus, does not attest
BJ/AJ-divide, see the introductions to recent biographies on Herod (listed below, n. 71); and also Fuks 2002, 244.
5 That more material from Nicolaus was incorporated into AJ was already argued by Schürer 1879, 570; see also Wacholder 1962 and 1989, 154–64. Scepticism regarding BJ’s reliance on Nicolaus was expressed by Niese 1896, 209–10, in a way that reinforced the premise: the second half about Herod’s domestic misfortune could not, for Niese, have been written by a propagandist. For a more recent call for caution see Sievers 2009, 89–90.
6 He was sixty at the time of Herod’s death, here taken as 4 bce: see F 136.8.
7 Sophronios of Damascus, Miracles of the Saints Cyrus and John 54 (T 2).
8 For the first option see Laqueur 1937, 365. More recently Geiger 2014, 48 follows this path in dividing Nicolaus’ career into four stages, the second of which was in Alexandria; see also some of the commentaries, including Toher 2017, 3–4 and Scardigli 1983, 10. The second option is preferred by Bellemore 1984, xv and also entertained by Parmentier 2017, 433–4.
his presence as one of the tutors at Alexandria in 30 bce.9 For the latter, considering the children were born in 40 bce, διδάσκαλος is perhaps an odd term for their education as older children in Rome in the twenties.10 Furthermore, from what little else we know of Nicolaus’ career, a trajectory might seem logical in which he moved round the Eastern dynasts and came into increasing contact with Rome and Augustus personally in his diplomatic missions on Herod’s behalf, before later ending up at the Roman imperial court. Thus, cautiously, some time at Alexandria in the thirties might perhaps be factored into Nicolaus’ career.
Most significant for our interests, however, was the large amount of time that Nicolaus spent at the court of Herod. When he arrived is again not certain, though we know that he was in Herod’s company at the latest by 14 bce, when the king travelled through Ionia.11 He is described variously as Herod’s teacher (παιδευτής) and secretary (ὑπογραφεύς),12 and by the time of Herod’s death he was one of the highest ranking φίλοι at his court. But Nicolaus’ connections went beyond the Eastern rulers, and he even came to be well regarded by Augustus himself.13 He had indeed travelled to Rome several times on Herod’s business, sometimes advocating directly before the princeps, and, on the last occasion of which we are aware, he journeyed to the capital to speak in favour of Archelaus as Herod’s successor. It is often assumed that he thereafter stayed on and became a part of the imperial court circle: while there is
9 Plutarch, Life of Antony 72.2: instead, it is Euphronius.
10 Toher 2017, 4; indeed the traditional understanding of the educational model held that a didaskalos would teach at basic education stage; students would then move onwards and upwards to a grammatikos and then possibly advance to a rhētor. Cribiore 2001, 196 suggested a rather more holistic, flexible understanding based on the Egyptian evidence.
11 AJ 16.27–58; see also AJ 12.126–127. Nicolaus is also attested as having met the Indian ambassadors to Augustus in Antioch in 20 bce (Strabo 15.1.73): it is possible he had joined Herod’s court by then, and this was the occasion for his opportunity to witness the meeting. One possible context for joining Herod’s court would be an exodus of advisors from the Alexandrian court after Actium, but despite the probable identity of Herod’s friend Olympus with Cleopatra’s doctor (Plut. Antony 82) it is difficult to show that a significant number of people ended up in Jerusalem on that occasion: Parmentier 2017, 431–5.
12 See Sophronius of Damascos, Miracles of the Saints Cyrus and John 54 (T 2) and Constantinus VII Porphryogenetus, On the Themes of East and West 1.3 (T 3) respectively.
13 To the extent that Augustus was alleged by some to have named a type of date after him: see Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 14.66, 652 A (Nicolaus F 10a); Plutarch, Table Talk 8.4.1, 723D (T 10b) states, however, that this was Herod; the Suda entry (T 1) and Photius (T 13) have this as flat-cakes (πλακοῦντες) instead.
no direct evidence that he stayed for a long time,14 it is perhaps the best explanation for his eventual description as variously a γνώριμος, ἑταῖρος, or φίλος of the emperor.15
Beyond his skill in advocacy, Nicolaus was a prodigious writer across genres: tragedies and comedies in his youth, a treatise on customs, and large numbers of philosophical works that generally show his dedication to Aristotle. We also have lengthy sections, if unfortunately not the whole of, his Life of Augustus, a rather Greek encomiastic take on the emperor’s life, as well as some fragments from his own Autobiography. But perhaps his most significant achievement was a Universal History, a monumental work of 144 books, the writing of which he likened to a Herculean labour (F 135).
The chronology of these works is tricky to establish. The Life of Augustus was commonly dated to the twenties bce after Jacoby’s work on the fragments,16 though recent arguments have called this into question once again.17 On balance a dating to after the princeps’ death best fits the tone of the work. Such a date would fit the boundaries of the Empire in Germany therein,18 which demand a date around 12 bce or after 10 ce; the first paragraph also makes best sense if Augustus had indeed died by its time of publication.19 The emperor’s demise might also give a plausible immediate impetus for the work’s writing by an old man to honour his recently passed patron after a long stay at Rome. The Autobiography must have been written after 4 bce, as the death of Herod
14 Though it is certain that he stayed at Rome: F 138 records alleged accusations that in Rome he spent too much time with common people.
15 Γνώριμος in the Suda (T 1); ἑταῖρος in Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 14.66, 652 A (T 10a); φίλος in Photius, Bibliotheca 189, p. 145 b28 (T 13). F 136.11 states that Augustus honoured Nicolaus after his advocacy for Archelaus; earlier in that fragment (F 136.8) it is stated that Nicolaus had decided to retire before being drawn in by Archelaus; a retirement dedicated to literary disputes would not be unheard of in antiquity.
16 This was based in no small part on Jacoby’s contention that Nicolaus worked closely from Augustus’ Autobiography published not long before. As has often been pointed out, there is no reason to assume this, nor any way to substantiate it; a later date also does not rule out a relationship to the Autobiography in any case.
17 See most recently Toher 2017, 22–8, and especially Toher 1985; also Steidle 1951, 133–5; Laqueur 1937, cols. 404–406 also did not follow Jacoby.
18 The Rhine is stated as the limit of the Roman imperium; F 125. See the comments of Scardigli 1983, 64–5 and Toher 2017, 23, though the observation goes back much ealier.
19 See Laqueur’s 1937, 404 comments on the references within the first paragraph to the cultic honours for Augustus and that Nicolaus knew of Augustus’s death; see also Steidle 1951, 134 in support of this and on the first paragraph’s relation to the work as a whole.
is explicitly mentioned in one of the fragments (F 136): in general, it is key for our purposes to note that material on Herod, and Nicolaus’ time at his court, was certainly included in this work.
The trickier questions come with the Universal History: its dating, writing, and the material included therein. One key fragment for this question is F 135:20
Herod put aside for the moment his love for philosophy, as is accustomed to happen to those who are in a prominent position because of the multitude of goods that delight them. And he again set his heart on oratory and obliged Nicolaus to cultivate it with him. So they practised oratory together. But he was taken again by his love for history, since Nicolaus praised this activity and said it was the most suitable for a politician and useful to a king, as it tells about the works and the deeds of the ancestors. And launching out into this task, he urged Nicolaus to devote himself to history. The latter embarked upon the enterprise in grand style, gathering all historical events and making a great effort without equal; and having made it a labour of love over a lot of time, he brought it to an end. He said that if Eurystheus had imposed on
20 Translation slightly adapted from BNJ (Favuzzi).
Herakles such a labour, it would have worn him out. Later Herod sailed to Rome to go to Caesar and took with him Nicolaus on the same ship. They discussed philosophy together.
Aside from a beautiful, possibly idealised, portrait of Nicolaus’ relationship to the king—true to his role as παιδευτής , Nicolaus guided him in his somewhat transient interests in various arts, though gently pushed him towards that which was ‘most suitable for a politician and useful to a king’—the passage encapsulates long-lasting elements of the perception of Nicolaus’ writing, to which we shall return shortly. But before we come to that, we might note the details about the History’s composition. This was undertaken at Herod’s prompting by Nicolaus in grand style, encompassing all historical events. He brought it to an end after a great deal of labour. We then have the problem of ἐκ τούτου , which Toher has argued always in Nicolaus refers to what comes directly after or as a direct result of what has gone before.21 Consequently, the History was completed in 12 bce, the point at which the above journey to Rome occurred. We would thus have a terminal point at or before 12 bce.
The problem is that we know Nicolaus included events after 12 bce. There are several solutions to solve this. The first is to take the fragment as not strictly chronological but providing an overview on Nicolaus’ occupations while with Herod;22 Toher’s observations would then have to be ignored. The second is to suggest that there was an ‘add on’ later, which dealt with more contemporary events including, indeed, Herod’s reign and Nicolaus’ own role therein.23 The Suda does refer to the work as consisting of eighty, not 144, books, though this seems too short even for a hypothesized earlier version, and may have been due to the limited availability of the work to later readers.24 While the fragmentary nature of the work means we cannot be absolutely certain of its structure, it
21 Toher 1985, 136–7. 22 This was Jacoby’s reading: FGrHist IIC, 231.
23 Toher 1985 suggests this.
24 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 6.54, 249 A (T 11a) refers to 144 books; Suda v393 (T 1) has eighty. The latter number was likely due to the availability of the history to tenth-century authors, who may not even have had access to those eighty books and taken this over from earlier research (possibly Hesychius of Miletus, sixth century); the Constantinian excerptors only abridged Books 1–7. See Parmentier & Barone 2011, xxiv.
does seem in general to have followed what had become a typical arrangement of Universal History after Ephorus: broadly chronological, with territories and peoples divided into parallel eras.25 We can therefore perhaps make some progress on the basis of attested events in certain books. The last event in the fragments of the Universal History not to do with Herod’s reign is dated to 42 bce, in a fragment that is not assigned to a particular book, so we are unsure how far along Nicolaus was by this point.26 Book 114 included Crassus’ defeat by the Parthians in 53 bce (F 79), and Book 116 seems to have dealt with Caesar’s Gallic campaigns (F 80). The next attestation tied to a book is of Nicolaus’ own travels around Ionia with Herod in Books 123 and 124.27
Two books for this episode seems lengthy in the extreme, though it is of course possible that the material was divided amidst other events, and that the journey started towards the end of Book 123 and ended early in Book 124. We also do not know the length of Nicolaus’ books. Still, to reach the number of 144 for the final version, it does seem as though a considerable amount of the final work was dedicated to Herod’s reign— disproportionate to the time covered.28 There are, however, parallels for this: in general, universal historians did tend to become more detailed as they approached the present and Ephorus seems to have covered only forty-five years (387–340 bce) in his last ten books.29 Livy also delayed publication of the Augustan material in his work until after the princeps’ death. Perhaps we might hypothesize a similar end date to Strabo. While the latter is often thought to have picked 27 bce,30 just after the victory at Actium could also have been plausible for Nicolaus—and in the later add-on, written in retirement at Rome, Nicolaus covered not only the king’s reign and matters specific to the locality of Judaea, but wove
25 Wacholder 1962, 66; Jacoby FGrH IIC, 254.
26 F 99 on the suicide of Brutus’ wife, Porcia.
27 AJ 12.127; on potential issues with this reference, see Chapter 4, n. 6.
28 Schürer 1901, 53 states the last twenty books covered the period from 14 bce to 4 bce and the takeover of Archelaus, implicitly putting the end at 4 bce. The usual argument for this terminal date is that after 4 bce, Josephus’ account of Jewish history suddenly lacks detail, and even basic information on Archelaus’ reign is missing. But this only indicates that Nicolaus did not include Jewish history after Herod’s death, not that he ended his history with it.
29 For overviews on universal history, see Momigliano 1982; Alonso-Núñez 1990 and 2002; Marincola 2007.
30 See Engels 1999, 36–40, 80–1.
this in with other events in the Augustan era. The terminal date thus may have been 4 bce, with the death of Herod, or perhaps more plausibly a little later at a time of imperial import.31 A specific prompt towards writing the extra books may have been the embarrassment of 6 ce when Archelaus, for whom Nicolaus had publicly advocated at Rome, was deposed due to incompetence. What better point to then take up where he had left off, and write a history of this odd region that might in part explain why civilized rulers, such as those favoured by Nicolaus, had found it so difficult to rule?32
This is of course speculation, but we can at least state with certainty that Nicolaus wrote extensively on Herod after the king’s death. To return to our starting point, this fact may elucidate a peculiarity in the way Josephus uses Nicolaus. Josephus refers to Nicolaus repeatedly throughout the Antiquities.33 Most of these named references are included to substantiate Josephus’ points, but one, at AJ 16.183–187, is critical in the extreme, accusing Nicolaus of continually praising (ἐγκωμιάζων) the king’s deeds and zealously justifying (ἀπολογούμενος) his unlawful ones.34 Nicolaus, in Josephus’ formulation, wrote only to be of service to the king, because he lived in his kingdom.35 As early as 1882, Destinon noted that these criticisms had been given too much weight in scholarly discussions, and that although Josephus polemicized against Nicolaus, he then proceeded to copy out his source anyway.36 Toher has recently revived these arguments, noting too the criticism of past treatments of a subject as a topos of ancient historiography more
31 One possibility could be 4 ce, with the adoption of Tiberius and thus the clear designation of one, single heir to the imperial monarchy.
32 This idea of the Judaeans as a difficult people will be explored in Chapter 7.
33 See AJ 1.94–95, 108, 159; 7.101, 12.127, 13.250–251, 347; 14.68, 104; 16.183–186; see also a mention in CAp. 2.84.
34 Greek from AJ 16.185–186. See also AJ 14.9: ταῦτα
35 AJ 16.184 (Niese’s text):
. The text cannot be understood in this form; LCL corrects
to
to
and
36 Destinon 1882, 98: ‘Ich glaube nachgewiesen zu haben, dass Josephus’ Anklagen gegen Nicolaus übertrieben sind. Die bisherige Forschung hat eben nach meiner Meinung den Fehler begangen, seinen Worten allzugrosses Vertrauen zu schenken’; see also 113. Ilan 1999, 106 generally follows his reconstruction. See Chapters 5 and 6 on two specific episodes on which Josephus specifically censures Nicolaus’ treatment, criticisms that cannot be upheld on comparison with extant fragments (see especially Chapter 6).
generally.37 After all, if there was a perfectly good account already, why write another? And why would anyone then have the motivation to read it? Toher notwithstanding, scholarship since then has not, in general, heeded Destinon’s cautions, and Nicolaus is still often characterised to various degrees as Herod’s ‘court historian’ in the sense of a propagandist and nothing more, who was concerned to present his master in the best possible light.
The above chronology should give us instant pause in taking this line. If this reconstruction is correct, Herod could not have been ‘looking over his shoulder’ when Nicolaus wrote about the king,38 checking his historian’s every sentence, for the very compelling reason that he was dead by the time Nicolaus came to write about him. And if we do away with the basic presumption that within Josephus’ text anything critical of Herod could not have come from Nicolaus, one of the staples of much previous source-criticism, we fundamentally change our ideas about the accounts with which Josephus was working. So if Nicolaus is no longer considered a mere propagandist, what was he doing in his account of Herod’s reign? And can a fresh approach to Josephus’ text, free from this stereotype, shed new light on Nicolaus’ otherwise lost Herodian narrative?
Who Else Wrote about Herod?
The premise of our book is that the image of Herod we have in Josephus is indeed the result of ‘a confrontation between two great writers each with their own kind of consuming interest in Herod, now accessible to us only by deduction from the pages of Josephus’.39 However, it is important to note that there were also bystanders who could weigh in this confrontation. While there is little doubt that Nicolaus was Josephus’
37 Toher 2009, 67.
38 Wacholder 1989, 163: ‘Nicolaus seems to have been a court historian in the full sense of the word, writing as if someone were always looking over his shoulder’. Nicolaus is seen as a propagandistic ‘court historian’ in every modern biography of Herod (see below, n. 71) and in the recent commentary by Shahin 2020, 11–12.
39 Rajak 2007, 33.
main source, it is also beyond dispute that he used additional sources as well. Similarly, Nicolaus need not have been the first author to write about Herod, and he too may have used sources: to learn more about the early period when he was not yet at Herod’s court, or perhaps to engage with other views on Herod that had already been put forward. Both of these scenarios complicate our quest for Nicolaus’ Herodian narrative. There is reason to believe that the complication is not as severe as it looks at first sight: whatever else Josephus may have read, Nicolaus was by far the most important source for his Herodian material; and whatever Nicolaus might have incorporated from earlier authors would still have become a part of his own Herodian tale, just like Nicolaus’ work became a part of Josephus’. It will also be evident to readers that source critical studies necessarily involve a degree of speculation. It is nevertheless important to identify potential pitfalls as early as possible. So: who else wrote about Herod?
Herod
On one occasion, Josephus cites a work which he calls ‘the memoirs of king Herod’ (τὰ ὑπομνήματα
, AJ 15.174). He does so to point out that the report he has just given (about the death of Hyrcanus II) is only one version of the story, whereas ‘others’ (ἄλλοι) disagree; an alternative version is then put forward. It is not at all improbable that Herod would have written some sort of autobiography; many leaders of the Augustan age did. Whether he was influenced by Nicolaus’ own plans for an autobiography is much less certain, although the Damascene would certainly have been able to give advice.40 As the memoirs are mentioned nowhere else, it is not clear what sort of text they were: an elaborate work of art, or prosaic commentarii, perhaps designed as material to be further developed by Nicolaus in his Universal History?41 Another, more pertinent question for our
40 On the Augustan context and the possible impetus from Nicolaus, see Geiger 2009.
41 The latter context is envisaged by Laqueur 1937, 399–400, with reference to Cic. ad Att 2.1.2. On the possible meanings of ὑπομνήματα, see Engels 1999, 59–68. In Vita 342, Josephus uses the word to refer to Vespasian’s commentarii.
purposes is how well Josephus knew them. The general impression from Antiquities is that he cites those works that he actually knew himself more than once. That he only mentions the memoirs on this one occasion has long been regarded as an indication that he did not actually have access to the work, but only knew it because Nicolaus of Damascus had quoted it in his Universal History.42 This theory cannot of course be proven, but in the absence of other references, it remains the most plausible scenario. While it is possible that some of the episodes discussed in this book have their origin in Herod’s own memoirs, we will therefore assume that the reason we know them is that they were also integrated into Nicolaus’ work.
Strabo
In Antiquities 13 to 15, Josephus cites Strabo’s lost Historika Hypomnēmata a number of times, and in fact quotes him verbatim more often than he quotes Nicolaus of Damascus. Most of the citations (seven out of ten) come in Book 14, and they mainly relate to Pompey’s conquest of Judaea and its aftermath. Only one citation, the latest of all fragments from Strabo’s historical work, has directly to do with Herod: after an account of how Herod bribed Antony to put his rival Antigonus Mattathias to death at the end of Book 14 (AJ 14.489–490), Josephus follows this up at the beginning of Book 15 with a report about Antigonus’ execution in Antioch (AJ 15.8–9). This is then followed by a quotation from Strabo, who ‘testifies’ (μαρτυρεῖ) to the accuracy of Josephus’ words: according to the Cappadocian, Antony had Antigonus killed because he thought that the Jews would not accept Herod as king as long as their former king was still alive (AJ 15.9–10).
Strabo’s account, which is very much focused on Antony, does indeed report the same basic events, but it does so in a very compressed form: apparently, this was all Strabo had to say about the episode. There is no room for the elaborate context built up by Josephus—Herod’s bribery
42 This view originates with Destinon 1882, 96–8, 123–6 (who thinks that even ἡμεῖς in this passage is not Josephus but Nicolaus); see more recently Geiger 2009, 79.
and feelings of inferiority, or Antony’s original deliberation to save Antigonus for the triumph at Rome, reported in AJ 15.8. The obvious conclusion is that Strabo is not the source of the Josephan narrative, but is used to confirm its accuracy—Josephus does not in fact claim anything else. The pattern is a familiar one that has long been recognised: wherever Josephus cites Strabo verbatim, the context of the quotation excludes the possibility that the narrative as such is taken from Strabo; frequently enough, there are outright contradictions between the surroundings and the quotation.43 While there is no need to doubt that Josephus did indeed have access to Strabo’s work (and did not copy these references from somewhere else), he seems to have used Strabo mainly as an authoritative voice to confirm a report that he had created based on other, more detailed sources.44 It is debated to what extent the late Hellenistic narrative of AJ 13 and the Pompeian narrative of AJ 14 include further, unattributed episodes from Strabo,45 but it seems clear enough that neither of these narrative sections was primarily based on Strabo’s work.
Apart from this general insight into Josephus’ use of Strabo, two important considerations explain why we will not see much of Strabo in this book. The first is chronology. We do not know when exactly Strabo’s History ended, but there is general agreement that it was written in the twenties bce; as mentioned above, it might have ended in 27 bce. More than two decades of Herod’s rule would have been excluded by necessity—which means that any narrative strategy that connects earlier and later events in Herod’s life cannot possibly derive from Strabo. The second reason is, quite simply, quality. How much Strabo knew about Herod emerges from a passage in the Geography (16.2.46): He was a native of Judaea, the son of another Herod who had been appointed
43 Notably when Aristobulus I is praised as a kind and successful ruler by Strabo in AJ 13.319, when Josephus has just given a rather unfavourable report about his reign; or when Strabo ascribes an active role to Hyrcanus II in the Jewish support for Caesar’s Egyptian campaign in AJ 14.138–139, whereas Josephus’ surrounding narrative presupposes that Hyrcanus was unenergetic and left everything to Antipater. See Albert 1902 for this position on Josephus’ use of Strabo; more recently, Galimberti 2007 has reached a similar conclusion (without reference to Albert’s work).
44 For a similar strategy in Diodorus, see Rathmann 2016, 216–25.
45 Galimberti 2007, 161–5 makes some plausible suggestions; for the Pompeian campaign see also Bellemore 1999.
high priest by Pompey; having been made king by the Romans, Herod usurped the priesthood as well. None of this makes any sense. Some of it may be rectified, but the very fact that we have to do so (using material from Josephus) speaks against the possibility that either Josephus’ or Nicolaus’ Herodian narratives owe much to Strabo.46 While Strabo was generally well-informed about the Pompeian campaigns in the East and also had a good knowledge of affairs in the time of Caesar, he does not seem to have made much of an effort to inform himself about subsequent developments in Judaea.
Ptolemy
Only a single passage survives from a work ‘On King Herod’, divided into several books and attributed by Ammonius to a certain Ptolemy. The fragment discusses the difference between Judaeans and Idumaeans: Judaeans, it is argued, are Judaeans by nature, whereas Idumaeans are originally Syrians and Phoenicians, but have been called Judaeans ever since they were forced to adopt circumcision and contribute to the Judaean ethnos.47 The context for the quotation, which comes from a book on synonyms, must surely be the increasing confusion about the terms Idumaea and Iudaea particularly after 70 ce.48 In an attempt at clarification, Ammonius (or someone else in the long tradition of lexica recording synonyms) not unreasonably adduced testimony from a biography of King Herod—an Idumaean who had been king of Judaea. But who was Ptolemy, and when did he write?
Several individuals at Herod’s court were called Ptolemy—among them, most notably, the brother of Nicolaus of Damascus.49 The possibility
46 It is difficult to join Galimberti 2007, 158 in his praise of Strabo’s ‘good quality of information’ on Herod. Strabo’s ‘ignorance total du milieu’ also buries the idea that Strabo visited Herodian Jerusalem, as justly pointed out by Parmentier 2017, 438.
47 Ptolemy apud Ammonius, de adf. voc. diff. no. 243 (Stern 1974–1980, Nr. 146): Ἰουδαῖοι
48 On this, see D. Schwartz 2005. 49 See Chapter 2.
that one of them could have written the work cited by Ammonius has usually been excluded because the fragment, which may be the very beginning of Book 1, distinguishes between Judaeans and Idumaeans.50 Herod’s Idumaean ancestry was used by his enemies to demean him, whereas his friends would have been bound to the official version of his pedigree that had him descend from an old Jewish family. The argument is convincing on first sight but based on a wrong premise: There are strong indications that Nicolaus of Damascus, himself a close friend of Herod, wrote at some length about the king’s Idumaean heritage, without of course holding it against him. If this argument (developed in Chapter 2) is accepted, it is no longer possible to see Ptolemy’s distinction between Idumaeans and Judaeans as evidence for his anti-Herodian stance.
A stronger argument against the identification of Ptolemy the biographer with any of the Ptolemies recorded by Josephus would be a positive identification with a different Ptolemy. The one proposal that has gained some traction is Ptolemy of Ascalon, who is known to tradition only as a grammarian but may of course have written historical works as well.51 The argument is ultimately based on the assumption that Ammonius, who cites Ptolemy the grammarian elsewhere, would have told us if on this occasion he referred to a different Ptolemy. This is possible, but no more than that. All additional arguments—the dating of Ptolemy of Ascalon to the Augustan or the Tiberian period, or the fact that there were ancient traditions about Herod’s own descent from Ascalon—only carry weight if the identification is accepted in the first place. Matters have to remain undecided here, which is not that much of a loss given that we know next to nothing about Ptolemy of Ascalon: we cannot even exclude the possibility that he was in fact one of the Ptolemies at Herod’s court!
The main insight to be gained from any such identification would be the date of the biography in question. It may well precede Josephus, who, as we have seen, occasionally mentions ‘others’ who wrote on
50 For this argument, see Schürer 1879, 571; Hölscher 1904, 57; Kokkinos 1998, 91; Eckhardt 2009, 479 n. 36; Geiger 2012, 186 n. 13.
51 All arguments are laid out by Geiger 2012; cf. most recently Marciak 2018, 888. Neither discusses the much more sceptical treatment by Shatzman 2005, 218–19.
Herod; Ptolemy might be among them. It is even possible that Ptolemy’s work preceded that of Nicolaus, who might already have dealt with his account. However, since the one thing that we thought we knew about Ptolemy (that he had an anti-Herodian tendency or at the very least lacked a pro-Herodian one) is now called into question, the value of such speculations is reduced to zero. Ptolemy is nothing more than a name we might want to attach to any tradition that does not seem to fit Nicolaus, but also does not look like an invention of Josephus.
‘Our Fathers’
At the very end of Book 15 of Antiquities, Josephus finishes off a long description of Herod’s new temple with an anecdote: during the whole time the temple was built (i.e. several years), it only rained at night, so that the daily work was not interrupted (AJ 15.425). This tradition was ‘handed down to us by our fathers’ (
παρέδωκαν), and Josephus goes on to emphasise that it is far from incredible in light of other instances of divine manifestations. This is the only time in the Herodian narratives that Josephus explicitly affirms that he owes his information to Jewish traditions. It is a brief note, and none that has to do with Herod in particular: the focus is on the temple. However, it has long been argued that in Antiquities, Josephus incorporated several legends from the Second Temple period both in his Hasmonaean and his Herodian narratives.52 These legends are usually identifiable because they differ in style and content from their surroundings, but also, and more interestingly, by the fact that they have parallels in later Rabbinic literature. The rain miracle is in fact mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, including a reference to the ‘days of Herod’.53
The relationship between such parallels and the Josephan text has been a matter of dispute: while most studies have tended to assume that Josephus influenced the Talmudic traditions either directly or via an
52 See already Destinon 1882, 42–3; Hölscher 1904, 81–3.
53 bTaanit 23a (הלילב
). On this parallel, see Ilan’s treatment in Ilan & Noam 2017, 411–16.
early version of Josippon, a recent, large-scale investigation of all the parallels suggests that Josephus and the Rabbis independently drew on a lost set of texts from the Second Temple Period.54 This approach is plausible for some examples, but less so for others; it shall not be revisited here in detail, because most parallels do not actually relate to the Herodian period. If we exclude the tradition about a priest called Onias/Honi and his actions during the siege of Jerusalem in 63 bce,55 there are only three cases in the Herodian narrative of Antiquities where substantial parallels (rather than potential allusions) exist: the note on the rain miracle, Herod’s trial before the Sanhedrin, and an event in the hippodrome towards the very end of his life (to be discussed in our Epilogue). The trial before the Sanhedrin in particular has been discussed rather often and remains a confusing episode.56 Other Rabbinic traditions about Herod have very little resemblance with Josephus’ story, e.g. when Herod is regarded as a slave of the Hasmonaeans (as he is in parts of Christian literature) who came to power by killing his masters.57 As the Rabbis also tend to confuse Herod with the Hasmonaean king Alexander Jannaeus,58 it seems unwise to take Rabbinic traditions that do not have a parallel in Josephus as remnants of contemporary voices from Herodian Judaea. However, it remains plausible to assume that Josephus occasionally drew on Jewish traditions; in particular, there is no reason to dismiss his statement to this effect in AJ 15.425. If there are two such traditions in AJ’s Herodian narrative, we may well expect to find others. The possibility that information derives from Jewish legends about Herod will therefore have to be considered occasionally.
54 Ilan & Noam 2017. The opposite conclusion had influentially been reached by Cohen 1986.
55 On this episode see Noam in Ilan & Noam 2017, 318–40; English in Noam 2018, 157–85.
56 The parallel to AJ 14.168–184 is bSanhedrin 19a–b. Recent treatments: Ilan in Ilan & Noam 2017, 349–72; Finkelstein 2019.
57 bBavaBatra 3b; on the Christian tradition about Herod’s origins see Schalit 1962.
58 E.g. in the Sanhedrin episode; see also D. Schwartz 2007, 49–52.
