Table Of ContentHerod in History
Herod in History
Nicolaus of Damascus and the
Augustan Context
KIMBERLEY CZAJKOWSKI AND
BENEDIKT ECKHARDT
1
1
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936614
ISBN 978–0–19–284521–4
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192845214.001.0001
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Acknowledgements
We have incurred various debts of gratitude in the course of writing this
short book, not least from seminar audiences who have been subjected
to different chapters at various stages of work in progress. We would
especially like to thank Martin Goodman for the invitation to present a
version of the book as a whole at the Oxford Seminar on Jewish History
and Literature in the Graeco- Roman Period in February 2020, and
likewise the audience for taking us to task on certain key points.
Chapter 3, ‘Herod the Saviour’ was greatly helped by an invitation from
Aneurin Ellis- Evans to present at the Oxford Ancient History Seminar’s
themed series Kingship and Statecraft in the Greek East in 2019; a very
early version indeed of Chapter 5 was also inflicted upon Edinburgh
colleagues in 2016. The core of Chapter 4 was presented at a conference
on The Crazy Genius of Herod the Great held in Dublin in 2015, and
Chapter 7 has the longest history, as it revisits ideas first presented at a
conference in Paris in 2012, and published (in a much shorter form) in
the proceedings (Eckhardt, 2014). Thanks are due to all these audiences.
While this was very much a collaborative effort, the material did not
lend itself to joint authorship throughout, not least because of the
different prehistories of individual chapters. Hence, Chapters 2, 4, and 7
are written by Eckhardt, whereas Czajkowski has authored Chapters 3,
5, and 6.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/07/21, SPi
Contents
1. Herod and his Historians 1
2. Herod on the Rise 25
3. Herod the Saviour 51
4. Herod the Liberator 73
5. Herod the Husband 95
6. Herod and his Sons 115
7. Herod and the People’s Front of Judaea 139
Epilogue: Herod and the Worms 165
References 175
Index of Sources 187
General Index 194
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/07/21, SPi
1
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
poli ti cians—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 his-
torical 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-u p
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
trad ition al 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
