Herod the Great: Client King of Judea and Master Builder

Herod the Great was king of Judea from 37 to 4 BC, ruling as a client of Rome over a kingdom that covered most of modern Israel, the Palestinian territories and parts of Jordan and Syria. A shrewd politician who survived the Roman civil wars by backing first Mark Antony and then Augustus, he gave Judea three decades of stability and some of the grandest buildings in the ancient world. He is also remembered for his brutality, including the execution of his wife and three of his sons.

Background and rise to power

Herod was born around 73 BC into a family from Idumea, the region south of Judea whose people had been converted to Judaism by the Hasmonean kings, the dynasty founded after the Maccabean Revolt. His father Antipater was a powerful adviser to the Hasmonean ruler Hyrcanus II, and his mother Cypros came from a noble Nabataean Arab family.

After Pompey took Jerusalem in 63 BC, Judea fell under Roman supervision. Antipater won the favour of Julius Caesar, and in 47 BC the young Herod was made governor of Galilee, where he became known for executing bandits without trial.

In 40 BC the Parthians invaded and installed the Hasmonean prince Antigonus II Mattathias as king. Herod fled to Rome, where, with the support of Mark Antony and Octavian, the Senate declared him king of Judea. With Roman troops under Gaius Sosius he recaptured Jerusalem in 37 BC after a long siege. Antigonus was executed by the Romans.

Ruling for Rome

Herod’s power always depended on Rome. When Antony and Cleopatra were defeated at Actium in 31 BC, Herod went to meet Octavian at Rhodes, admitted his loyalty to Antony and offered the same loyalty to the victor. Octavian, soon to be Augustus, confirmed his kingship and enlarged his territory.

Herod governed through a network of fortresses, a professional army including foreign mercenaries, and a powerful secret police. He appointed and removed high priests at will. He also used his wealth for public good: during a severe famine around 25 BC he melted down palace gold to buy grain from Egypt.

He presented himself both as a Jewish king and as a Hellenistic ruler. He funded games and buildings in Greek cities across the eastern Mediterranean, including support for the Olympic Games, while generally avoiding human images on coins circulated in Judea.

Family violence

Herod married ten wives. His marriage in 37 BC to Mariamne, a Hasmonean princess, linked him to the old royal house, but he saw her relatives as rivals. Her brother Aristobulus III, whom Herod had made high priest, was drowned in a swimming pool at Jericho around 35 BC. The elderly Hyrcanus II was executed in 30 BC, Mariamne herself in 29 BC and her mother Alexandra soon after.

In 7 BC Herod had his two sons by Mariamne, Alexander and Aristobulus, strangled after accusations of plotting. His eldest son Antipater was executed only days before Herod’s own death. The Roman writer Macrobius, writing four centuries later, reports Augustus joking that it was better to be Herod’s pig than his son, a pun in Greek on the words for pig and son.

The great builder

Herod’s building programme was among the largest of the age. In about 20/19 BC he began rebuilding the Second Temple in Jerusalem, more than doubling the size of the Temple Mount with enormous retaining walls. The Western Wall, sacred in Judaism today, is part of that platform. Work on the wider complex continued long after his death.

Herod also built the Antonia fortress beside the Temple, a palace with three towers on the city’s western hill, and theatres and a hippodrome. Elsewhere he created the port city of Caesarea Maritima, rebuilt Samaria as Sebaste in honour of Augustus, and raised a monumental enclosure over the Cave of the Patriarchs at Hebron.

His desert fortresses combined security with luxury. At Masada he built terraced palaces hanging over the cliff edge, storerooms and cisterns, a site later famous for the siege of AD 73–74. Herodium, an artificial cone-shaped hill near Bethlehem, held a palace-fortress and became his burial place.

Religion, politics and opposition

Herod’s position among his Jewish subjects was always uneasy. As an Idumaean whose family had converted only two generations earlier, he was seen by some as a “half-Jew”, and as a Roman appointee he had displaced the popular Hasmonean dynasty. His marriage to Mariamne was partly an attempt to borrow Hasmonean legitimacy.

He took care to respect Jewish law in Jerusalem, for example by having priests trained as builders so that they could work in the sacred areas of the Temple. Yet he also built temples to Augustus at Caesarea, Sebaste and Paneas, outside the Jewish heartland, and introduced Greek-style games and theatres that pious Jews found offensive. Josephus records a plot by ten citizens to assassinate him in the theatre, which was discovered and punished.

Near the end of his life Herod placed a golden eagle over a gate of the Temple. Students of two respected teachers, Judas and Matthias, tore it down as a forbidden image. Herod had the teachers and several students burned alive, one of the final acts of a reign that ended in fear and suspicion.

Death and succession

Herod died in Jericho, most likely in the spring of 4 BC, after a painful illness that Josephus describes in detail. He was carried in a grand funeral procession to Herodium. In 2007 the archaeologist Ehud Netzer announced the discovery of his tomb and a smashed sarcophagus on the hill’s slope, an identification that most scholars accept, though some have questioned it.

Augustus confirmed Herod’s will with changes, dividing the kingdom. Archelaus became ethnarch of Judea, Samaria and Idumea but was deposed in AD 6, when Judea came under direct Roman rule. Herod Antipas ruled Galilee and Peraea, and Philip the lands north-east of the Sea of Galilee.

Legacy and reputation

In Christian tradition Herod is the king of the Nativity who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, an episode found only in the Gospel of Matthew and not mentioned by Josephus. Many historians doubt it took place as told, but it shaped his image as a tyrant for two thousand years.

Modern historians see a more complex figure: a capable, paranoid ruler who kept Judea peaceful and prosperous under Roman power, but whom many of his Jewish subjects resented as a usurper and a Roman puppet. The tensions of his reign helped lead to the revolt that ended in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Timeline

• c. 73 BC: Herod is born to Antipater and Cypros.
• 47 BC: He is appointed governor of Galilee.
• 40 BC: The Parthians invade; the Roman Senate names Herod king of Judea.
• 37 BC: Herod captures Jerusalem and marries Mariamne.
• 30 BC: Octavian confirms Herod as king after Actium.
• 29 BC: Mariamne is executed.
• c. 22–10 BC: Caesarea Maritima is built.
• c. 20/19 BC: Rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem begins.
• 7 BC: Alexander and Aristobulus are executed.
• 4 BC: Herod dies at Jericho and is buried at Herodium.

Why it matters

Herod shaped the physical landscape of Judea more than any ruler before or since in antiquity, and many of his buildings still stand. His reign shows how Rome governed through local client kings, and it forms the political backdrop to the birth of Jesus and the origins of Christianity.