The last Hasmoneans

In this novel about King Herod, the author sticks close to the facts.

By ALEXANDER ZVIELLI
Herod:The Man Who Had to Be King 370 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Herod:The Man Who Had to Be King 370
(photo credit: Courtesy)
In his historical novel about the love-hate relationship between King Herod (ca. 74-4 BCE) and his wife, the Hasmonean princess Mariamne, Yehuda Louis (Leib) Shulewitz brings to life many heroes of the ancient world, including the last Hasmoneans who lost Judean independence in 63 BCE.
Josephus tells us that “the occasions of this misery which came upon Jerusalem were Hyrcanus and Aristobulus by raising a sedition upon each other” (Ant. XIV, 5).
In 76 BCE, Queen Salome restored the Judean unity by bringing the Pharisees back into the Sanhedrin (the Jewish lawmaking body), but she died in 67 BCE, and her two sons started fighting for succession.
They invited the Roman general Pompey to arbitrate, and he entered Jerusalem, turned Judea into a Roman client-state, and made Hyrcanus a high priest and ethnarch only. The new Judean governor, Antipater – an Idumean, one of the people forcibly converted to Judaism – had a son, Herod, who became the governor of Galilee. Aristobulus fled to Parthia.
Shulewitz, Herod’s chronicler, was born in Peoria, Illinois, and served in the US Army during World War II. He came to Israel in 1947, where he received a degree in Jewish history at the Hebrew University (his previous degree was in economics), served in the IDF’s Mahal program and was the English editor of the Bank of Israel, while remaining busy in various literary activities. After his untimely death in 2007, his wife Malka completed the novel, adding an introduction and a comprehensive epilogue.
A historian, the author sticks to the facts, allowing himself poetic license on minor matters only. Herod won his kingdom by serving Rome and through his engagement to Mariamne. Already as a governor of Galilee, he violently enforced the payment of a heavy Roman tribute and murdered Hezekiah and his group of Jews who resisted occupation. Ordered to justify himself before the Sanhedrin, Herod fled to Syria, where the Romans appointed him governor of Coele-Syria and Samaria.
In 43 BCE, after Antipater was poisoned, Mark Antony recognized Herod and his brother Phasael as governors of Judea and Galilee. However, in 40 BCE, Mattathias Antigonus, son of Aristobulus, invaded Judea with Parthian assistance and occupied Jerusalem. Phasael committed suicide, and Hyrcanus was banished to Babylonia with cut ears so he couldn’t serve as a high priest anymore. Herod fled to Egypt after securing his family at Masada. He reached Rome, where the Roman Senate proclaimed him king of Judea.
The Jews loved and trusted Antigonus.
They hoped to get rid of the Roman and Idumean oppression. However, the Romans needed Judea in their war against Parthia, their major enemy, and they supported Herod. It took him three years to marry Mariamne and, with hefty Roman aid, to defeat Antigonus, enter Jerusalem, and establish his throne in 37 BCE.
Herod knew that he was hated. He built Herodion and developed Masada as safe retreats, and he employed mercenaries. A Jew by religion, he remained an Idumean and an Arab by race, a Greek in his admiration of Hellenism, and a Roman in his thirst for power. Already as king, he took bloody revenge on his actual and imaginary enemies and sought to eliminate the few remaining Hasmoneans.
It was Herod’s ambition to make Jerusalem a center of the Jewish world and Diaspora in order to magnify his own standing. He reconstructed and enlarged the Temple in Jerusalem for the same purpose, but put a Roman eagle on its wall and crucified Jews who attempted to take it down. He restored the Olympic Games and built a theater and stadium in Jerusalem. He supported pagan temples and offered huge gifts to his Roman and Greek friends. Herod offered Judea 50 years of peace, but he favored a dangerous Greek settlement.
A victor on the battlefield, he was a disaster at his own court. The proud princess Mariamne never respected him since he was below her rank. She became his bitter enemy after he executed the remaining Hasmoneans. Growing old, Herod trusted no one except for his sister Salome, who hated Jews, spied on everybody, planted intrigues and inspired his worst instincts.
He became an expert in extracting confessions by torture, and in a staged trial, he had Mariamne and her mother executed along with his two sons and the son of his first wife, Doris. No sooner were the executions carried out than he suffered terrible remorse and realized that his love for her had become even stronger.
Our novel ends with Herod’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Thus the reader is spared all the gruesome details of his rule as quoted by Josephus and mentioned in the New Testament (Matthew 3 and 4). The author preserves the authentic atmosphere of the ancient post-Hasmonean Judea, which was a victim of the Roman policies of domination and exploitation and paid a heavy price for trying to live in freedom under treacherous circumstances.
All of the characters – the vile and cruel Herod; the weak Hyrcanus and his court; the proud Mariamne; the strong Antipater; his wife Cypros, a Nabatean princess; his four sons, Phasael, Herod, Joseph and Pheroras, and their sister Salome; Shemaya, a lover of Torah; various Roman leaders, and Cleopatra (who tries to wrest Judea from Herod); Antigonus and his heroes; as well as some Jewish farmers and slaves – speak and act more or less as we would expect them to in this historically convincing presentation of the world of the first century BCE.