CHAPTER 11

BETRAYAL AND BLOODSHED

Out in the desert fortress of Masada, scorched by the unrelenting sun, Queen Mariamne seethed with an unquenchable fury. The intense heat overhead was tepid compared to the inferno within her soul. So bitter was Mariamne’s world that she could scarcely abide it. I am a Hasmonean, she told herself. I am the daughter of ancient kings! I should have the power to enforce my will . . . control my fate . . . inspire fear in all those around me. Instead, I am trapped under an appointed guardian, monitored like a little girl with a babysitter! The feeling of being hemmed in—controlled by men, unable to leave the few acres of empty sand atop Masada’s plateau—nearly drove Mariamne mad. Her only consolation was that Herod had gone to Rhodes to grovel before Octavian. Surely his throne would be taken from him. Even better would be his death at the emperor’s command. Then things could get back to the way they ought to be.

During the enforced exile at Masada, both Mariamne and Alexandra had been using their feminine charms on Soemus, the man whom Herod had put in charge of them. At first, Soemus had been a stickler for Herod’s rules. But over time—with the careful application of a compliment, a flirtatious bat of the eye, a little gift here or there—Soemus had softened. There were no sexual invitations, of course, for that would be far too dangerous. Yet adultery wasn’t required here. All that was needed was the slow but steady manipulation of the male ego. “You know, Soemus, after Herod is gone, Mother and I are going to be left in charge,” Mariamne suggested in a sly voice. “You’d be wise to be on our side. We could use a man of your impressive abilities.”

Soemus took the advice to heart and eventually began to divulge information. “Herod commanded me to kill you both if Octavian does him in,” he confessed. The news infuriated and terrified Mariamne at the same time. Once again, the two women would be victims of Herod’s political miscalculations. They would have to die for his foolish blunders. Will there ever be an end to these threats against my life? Almighty God, please stretch forth your hand and destroy this man! Let Octavian’s full rage be vented on Herod!

Unfortunately for Mariamne, almighty God had other plans. When the news arrived that the exact opposite of her prayers had happened, the young queen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. For weeks, all her hopes had ridden on the expectation that Herod would be dethroned, demoted, debilitated, maybe even decapitated. But no! Octavian actually honored him? Crowned his head with a diadem? Promised the return of his lands, plus many more? Showered him with compliments? Confirmed his right to rule by imperial decree? The shocking turn of events was too much to bear. As Mariamne rode back to Jerusalem with her mother in the royal carriage, she felt as if she were traveling to her own grave. “My life is intolerable,” she muttered as she stared out the window. Alexandra could only nod her head in agreement.

The two women arrived at the Jerusalem palace around the same time as Herod. The triumphant king, revitalized by his trip to Rhodes, stepped down from his carriage and rushed to embrace his queen. Though various courtiers and Herodian relatives stood about, it was Mariamne whom Herod most wanted to see. “His Majesty honored me!” Herod exclaimed, though Mariamne already knew it full well. “Octavian blessed me beyond measure. He retained me as king. Now my rule is secure!”

Mariamne didn’t even bother to conceal her revulsion at Herod’s embrace. To be caressed by this lowborn Idumean felt like being defiled by a rapist. “That’s wonderful,” she managed to say as she squirmed out of his arms and backed away. She didn’t care whether the palace officials noticed how fake her smile was. Though the churning in her stomach made her want to vomit, Mariamne held herself together long enough to go through the motions of celebrating Herod’s good news.

The king, however, wasn’t fooled. He could sense Mariamne’s displeasure—indeed, her abhorrence of his very touch—and it bothered him greatly. When he had hugged her, she literally groaned aloud. Clearly, something was bothering her. Herod resolved to find out what it was. Yet once those tender feelings passed, anger rushed in to replace them. How dare she reject me in front of my own courtiers? A king has the right to demand the affection of his queen. If she won’t provide it, I’ll find one who will!

No, Herod reminded himself. You mustn’t hurt her. You’ll regret it later. You can’t live without her. That fate would be worse for you than for her!

Herod’s turbulent state of mind persisted for many weeks as he and Mariamne experienced a whirlwind of emotions. They kept repeating the same accusations against each other without ever getting close to forgiveness and resolution. Eventually, the couple’s relations grew strained to the breaking point. The fractured state of their marriage presented a perfect opportunity for Cyprus and Salome to pursue their grievances against the Hasmonean women.

Ever since Herod’s mother and sister had come into the Judean orbit, they had been fighting undisguised prejudice against their foreign birth. Shamed again and again by relentless mockery or aloof snobbery, the two women were in no mood to help Herod patch things up with his wife. They believed they were defending Herod’s best interests when they slandered Mariamne and accused her (falsely) of numerous infidelities. But this only put the baffled king in a worse predicament. The historian Josephus remarked that Herod “was neither unwilling to listen to such statements nor courageous enough to take any action against his wife [despite his] belief in them.” Herod and Mariamne were locked in a death spiral of mutual suspicion, hatred, codependence, and hostility.

A reprieve came in the marital infighting when the arrival of important news turned Herod’s focus elsewhere. Octavian had officially ended the Roman civil war after Mark Antony and Cleopatra had committed suicide in Egypt. Herod knew Octavian would be traveling up the sea road along Judea’s western coast. Previously, after the two of them had patched things up at Rhodes, Herod had gone to excessive lengths to provide food, water, and a friendly escort to Octavian as he marched his army down to Egypt to finish off the doomed lovebirds. Now Herod wanted to show the same loyalty on the emperor’s return trip. He met Octavian in Egypt and supplied all his needs—plus many extra luxuries—on the way up to Antioch.

Octavian deeply appreciated the assistance, especially since he knew the lavish generosity Herod was bestowing on him exceeded his small kingdom’s budgetary means. It was at this time that the grateful Octavian restored Herod’s palms and balsam at Jericho, just as he had promised, as well as adding many other territories to Judea’s dominion. Since these were lands that earlier Hasmonean kings had once possessed, the territorial expansion strengthened Herod’s claim to be a ruler on par with prior Jewish luminaries. Octavian even gave him a bodyguard of four hundred Gauls who had once served the mighty Cleopatra. The move signaled that Herod was just as important as the famed Egyptian queen.

Nevertheless, despite these wins, Herod’s household troubles persisted. Josephus wrote that “the more he believed himself to be increasingly successful in external affairs, so much the more did he fail in domestic affairs, especially in his marriage, in which he had formerly seemed so fortunate.” Herod and Mariamne endured the kind of tragic relationship that epic sagas and Shakespearean romances often chronicle—a toxic obsession that typically ends, just as with Antony and Cleopatra, in violent death.

Josephus described Mariamne as respectably chaste, never unfaithful to Herod in the sexual realm. Her physical beauty, of course, could be rivaled by no one. Nevertheless, “She had in her nature something that was at once womanly and cruel, and she took full advantage of [Herod’s] enslavement to passion.” Never did she treat him with proper wifely submission, nor with the obedience due to a king, but only with arrogant disdain. Although Herod laughed at this and pretended to take it lightheartedly, the disrespect ate away at his soul. He seethed internally when she dishonored him in front of others or reviled Cyprus and Salome as ignoble commoners.

For a full year, this terrible situation continued to simmer and bubble like magma beneath the surface of the earth. And then one fateful day, the volcano’s top blew off and spewed deadly lava onto everyone in the palace, scorching everything it touched and leaving no one unharmed. Herod had retired on that particular day to his bedroom for an afternoon siesta; but first he called Mariamne to his bed. He spoke affectionately to her, inviting her to lie down with him. Clearly, he wanted to have sex with his wife. But instead of complying with a sweet spirit, Mariamne once again upbraided him for killing Aristobulus and Hyrcanus. Furious at the rebuff, Herod rebuked Mariamne for her constant arrogance and verbal contempt. Though Herod sent her away, those closest to him sensed he was about to lash out in a violent fashion.

At this highly charged moment, Salome recognized an opportunity to put in motion a prearranged plan. She sent Herod’s butler to his master with a bit of disturbing information. The butler revealed that Mariamne had urged him with bribery to slip a love-potion into Herod’s cup. (Ancient people believed that such potions would put the male recipient under the spell of the female who administered it, making men easy to control.) Salome had told the butler to gauge Herod’s response to the news. If he reacted negatively, the butler was supposed to say that he didn’t know the potion’s formula, only that Mariamne had prepared it. But if the king’s response was indifferent, the butler could simply let the matter drop.

Herod, of course, flew into a rage when he heard the butler’s revelation. He asked what the drug was, but the butler denied knowing any details; his only purpose in speaking up had been to help the king. Desperate to know more about the drug, Herod put Mariamne’s most trusted slave under torture. Since the whole story was made up, the poor fellow, despite being in extreme agony, couldn’t reveal anything about the love-potion that didn’t actually exist. Yet as the hot irons were mercilessly applied to his skin, the slave did admit that Mariamne’s hatred had been stirred up by Soemus’s revelation of Herod’s order to kill his wife if things went sour at Rhodes.

Now the anger that Herod had earlier felt toward his uncle Joseph resurfaced, this time directed toward Soemus. Only if that man were in an intimate relationship with Mariamne would he have revealed such a closely guarded secret. Instantly, and without any formal inquiry, Herod ordered the death of a man whom he had once viewed as a faithful friend.

But while Soemus was summarily executed, Herod granted a trial to Mariamne. Convening his closest advisers and counselors, the furious king put his wife under hard questioning. Not only did he grill her about the love-potion; he accused her of infidelities with Soemus. Though Mariamne tearfully protested her innocence, Herod’s advisers could see his insane jealousy. They had no wish to cross him in such a foul mood, so they ignored Mariamne’s desperate pleas as they contemplated whether to sentence her to capital punishment.

At this moment, another voice spoke up at the trial, one that sealed Mariamne’s fate. Her mother, who had always been faithfully on her side, now turned against her. The desperate Alexandra, fearing the reprisals that might fall on her own head in this toxic situation, threw Mariamne to the dogs to save her own skin. “You wicked girl!” she shouted at her daughter, jabbing her finger in fierce accusation. “You have always disrespected your honorable husband! Constantly you slander him, despite all he’s done for us! Now your punishment is just.” Then Alexandra ran forward and seized Mariamne by the hair, shaking her violently as she sought to prove her own innocence. “What an ungrateful wretch you are! You deserve to die for your crimes!” Once this terrible scene had played out, the counselors could no longer deny where things were headed. Lest any of them seem to be on Mariamne’s side, they unanimously sentenced her to death. Herod immediately accepted the decree.

Yet after this heated moment had passed, cooler heads began to prevail. Some of the counselors advised Herod—in concord with his own wishes as he began to regret his rash decision—that Mariamne should only be exiled to some remote fortress. But while the men dithered, Salome jumped into the fray again. “Don’t hold back from your decision, my brother!” she urged him. “If you let this woman live, the people will rise up in protest. They love you too much to allow your queen to treat you like this. They don’t want to see her exiled. They want to see her dead.”

“You are right,” Herod agreed. “I will do it.”

And with that, Mariamne had reached the end of her line. She was executed on Herod’s direct orders in 29 BC. Josephus reported that she went to her death with grace and decorum. Even when her mother had shaken her by the hair in the courtroom, Mariamne didn’t dignify such unworthy behavior with a reply. Though everyone could see she was in great distress, somehow, the princess had managed to maintain her aristocratic composure.

As she was led out to the execution grounds to be decapitated, Mariamne’s face wasn’t pale nor was her step faltering. Instead, her noble bearing proved to the onlookers that she was worthy of her Hasmonean bloodline. According to Josephus, Mariamne’s only flaw was her inability to curb her tongue. She couldn’t help but berate her husband—whether for his treacherous crimes, his low birth, or his twisted expressions of love—in the mistaken view that he would never hurt her. But in this life-or-death calculation about King Herod, his beloved queen found out the hard way that she was sorely wrong.

The death of Mariamne immediately began to drive Herod mad. From the beginning, his love for her had been what Josephus called “enthusiastic”—a Greek-based word that described a frenzied madness caused by demonic possession. Now those dark forces seized Herod and held him in their fierce and unrelenting grip. “What have I done? Oh God, what have I done?” he asked himself over and over, then asked it again. Yet no solace came to him. Herod never had been able to control his intense desire for Mariamne. Even when he supposedly possessed her in marriage, his drive to conquer her had only increased. Now, with Mariamne executed, Herod’s quest to possess her could never be fulfilled. She was dead and gone forever. Though he knew this on a rational level, his mind began to deny reality as his world spun out of control.

To maintain his tenuous hold on sanity, Herod tried to distract himself with parties and entertainments. Of course, the day-to-day governance of Judea was thrust to the side as Herod struggled to cope with his mind-twisting grief. Yet everyone in the palace knew he was losing the mental battle. Often, he would call out his wife’s name or burst into inconsolable groans. “Bring Mariamne to me,” he would sometimes order his servants as if she were still alive. But she never came to see the heartbroken king. One ancient Jewish source, the Babylonian Talmud, claims that Herod preserved Mariamne’s corpse in honey for seven years and he would sometimes even copulate with it. While those legends cannot be verified, such behavior wouldn’t have been out of character for Herod in the extremity of his insane grief.

To make matters worse, a deadly plague struck Judea at this time. Everyone interpreted the disaster as God’s judgment upon their king. The pestilence claimed some of Herod’s wisest advisers and closest friends. All of this plunged him into deeper depression. Though he went away on a hunting trip to escape the threat of sickness and the travails of palace life, the disease caught up with him in the wilderness, tormenting him with headaches and mad raving. No remedy could heal the despondent king. The doctors feared for his life.

When Alexandra learned of Herod’s seemingly fatal illness, she sprang into action. She demanded that the troop commanders hand over Jerusalem’s two strongest points: the Antonia fortress at the temple and Herod’s fortified palace near the present-day Tower of David (where one of the three Herodian-age towers still stands). Whoever controlled these twin citadels in Jerusalem would control the whole Jewish nation, for they safeguarded the daily temple sacrifices without which the Jews could not survive. Alexandra argued that these strategic military sites should be held in her possession so no illegitimate claimant could seize them if Herod were to die. “Of course, I will give them back if he happens to live,” Alexandra promised.

But the commanders didn’t believe her. They were old friends of Herod’s. In fact, one of them was Achiabus, the loyal cousin who later prevented Herod from stabbing himself in the gut. These military men immediately dispatched a messenger to Herod at his hunting retreat where he was struggling to recover from the plague. Whether he was in his right mind when he received the message is hard to say. What Herod did realize was that he’d finally had enough of Alexandra’s incessant scheming. “Execute that woman,” he ordered.

The command was swiftly carried out. Alexandra the Hasmonean, who had betrayed Mariamne in the courtroom, now joined her daughter in death as yet another victim of Herod the Great. The line that was crossed when the jealous king ordered Aristobulus to be drowned had led directly to the slaughter of Herod’s beloved wife, her grandfather, and her mother. Where would the bloodshed end? Clearly, the violence in Herod’s household reflected the growing mayhem within his own soul.