EROD the Great, the last independent sovereign of Palestine, had now become master of his dominions. So far his career had been marked with uncommon ability, nor, had it been disgraced by unusual atrocity. With signal penetration he had eluded the arts, by the rapidity and decision of his measures triumphed over the open hostility of his antagonists; by his knowledge of the Roman character, and that of the successive extraordinary individuals who had held the destiny of the world at their command, he had secured, not merely their protection, but their friendship. Still his situation was difficult and precarious; it demanded his utmost dexterity and vigour, and unhappily gave him the tyrant's plea of necessity, for the most relentless cruelties. The mass of the people were still ardently attached to the great Asmonean family; the faction of Antigonus was strong in Jerusalem. Against the latter he proceeded without scruple, put to death forty-five of the chiefs, and confiscated all their property. The whole Sanhedrin fell victims to his vengeance, excepting Sameas, (Shammai,) and Pollio. The two latter, during the siege, had endeavoured to persuade the city to capitulate. The rest had raised the popular cry-" The

temple of the Lord! the temple of the Lord!" and excited a strong enthusiasm against the alien from the blood of Israel.

The appointment to the office of high priest, caused the greatest embarrassment. The nation would never have endured the usurpation of that office by an Idumean stranger. Hyrcanus, the old patron of the Herodian family, returned from his honourable captivity in Parthia; he was received with every mark of outward respect by Herod; but the mutilation of his ears by Antigonus disqualified him for reinstatement in his office. Herod invited an obscure individual of the lineage of the high priest, Ananel, from Babylon. Alexandra, the widow of that gallant Alexander, the son of Aristobulus, who was executed by Scipio, beheld this choice. with secret indignation. She was a high-minded and ambitious woman; the marriage of her daughter Mariamne to Herod, aggravated rather than palliated the indignity of excluding her son, the rightful heir of both the Asmonean fami5s, from the priesthood. Unscrupulous as to her means of vengeance, she sent the pictures of her two children, a son and daughter, both of exquisite beauty, to Antony, in order, by this unnatural and odious measure, to work on the passions of the voluptuous triumvir. Herod was seized with apprehension, changed at once his policy, displaced Ananel, and installed the young Aristobulus in the pontificate. But mistrust and hatred had taken too deep root. Alexandra was detected in a secret correspondence with Cleopatra; and a plan which she had formed to fly with her son to the court of Egypt, was only disconcerted by the excessive vigilance of Herod. Worse than all this, when the lovely boy of seventeen, the heir of their righful princes, appeared before the assembled nation at the feast of Tabernacles, in the splendid costume of the high priest, and performing his solemn office with the most perfect grace, the popular feeling was too evident to be mistaken. Herod saw that his own suspicions were sadly verified: he had raised up a dangerous rival to his power in the young Asmonean. He dissembled his

jealousy, and joined in the general admiration; but, contriving shortly after to remove the youth to Jericho, he caused him to be drowned by his companions while bathing in a pool. He assumed great grief on the melancholy event, and attempted to divert the popular indignation by a splendid funeral; but the people were not deceived, still less the heart of the bereaved and wretched parent.

Alexandra sent intelligence of the murder to Cleopatra, who espoused her cause with the warmest interest of a woman and a mother; not without some secret suggestion from her ambition, which had already begun to look towards Judæa as a valuable province of Egypt. Antony was at the height of his devotion to the luxurious queen: the ruin of Herod seemed inevitable. With his characteristic boldness, he determined to try the effect of his personal presence, which might awaken early friendship, and give weight to those more powerful arguments, the immense bribes, with which he hoped to secure his cause. He left Jerusalem under the government of his uncle Joseph; he intrusted to his care not merely his interests, but his incomparable Mariamne. He went certainly to danger, perhaps to death; and, with a strange jealousy, he could not endure that any one should possess his wife even after his death, least of all the licentious Antony. He left a secret charge with Joseph, that if he should fail in his mission, Mariamne was to be immediately put to death. During his absence, the incautious Joseph betrayed this secret order to Mariamne. Her mother excited her to revenge. A sudden rumour spread abroad, that Herod had been slain by Antony. Alexandra and Mariamne began to take immediate measures for securing the authority; but intelligence of an opposite nature frustrated their plans. On the return of Herod, his sister Salome, wounded at the haughtiness with which she had ever been treated by the proud Asmonean princess, endeavoured to poison his mind with suspicions of his wife, whom she accused of too intimate correspondence with Joseph, the governor. Yet the beauty of Mariamne once seen, overpowered

every emotion but that of unbounded love. Unhappily, in the transport of tender reconciliation, Mariamne asked whether if he had really loved her, he would have given that fatal order for her death. Herod sprang from her arms in fury. The betrayal of this secret warranted his worst suspicions; it could not have been yielded up but at the price of her honour. He would have slain her on the spot, but her beauty, even then, disarmed him : his whole vengeance fell on Joseph and Alexandra. The first he executed; the second he imprisoned with every mark of insult. Cleopatra, in the mean time, having been unable to extort the gift of Judæa from her paramour, was obliged to content herself with the balsam gardens near Jericho. On her return from accompanying Antony in his campaign to the Euphrates, she entered Jerusalem, and Herod was in as great danger from her love as from her hate. Whether from prudence or dislike, he repelled her advances, and even entertained some thoughts of delivering both himself from a dangerous neighbour, and Antony from a fatal and imperious mistress, by her assassination. His friends dissuaded him from the hazardous measure. A short time after, he found himself engaged in a war, which he entered into with the ostensible design of enforcing Cleopatra's right of tribute over Malchus, king of Arabia. By complying with the wishes of Antony on this point, the dexterous politician escaped taking any prominent part in the great war between the eastern and western world, which was to award the empire to Antony or Octavius. In his first invasion of Arabia he was unsuccessful, and met with so signal a defeat, that he was constrained to change the war into one of sudden irruptions into the border of the enemy, without risking a battle. A more tremendous blow fell on Judæa-an earthquake, which threw down many cities, and destroyed thirty thousand lives. The Arabs seized the opportunity of this disaster, and put the Jewish ambassadors to death; but this conduct enabled Herod to rouse the national spirit, and the Arabians, defeated with the loss of five thousand men, were Desieged in their camp. Many surrendered from want of

water; the rest made a desperate but fatal sally, in which seven thousand more perished.

Still, though not personally engaged in the battle of Actium, Herod had reason to apprehend the triumph of Octavius Cæsar. Having secured every thing at home, he determined to meet the youthful conqueror at Rhodes. While one remnant of the Asmonean race sarrived, his throne was less secure; and the old Hyrcanus, now eighty years of age, at length paid the last penalty for having unhappily been born to a lofty station, for which he was unfit. The documents in the royal archives of Herod, accused the poor old man of having been persuaded, by his intriguing daughter, Alexandra, into a treasonable correspondence with the Arabian king: other accounts ascribe the invention of the plot to Herod. At all events it was fatal to Hyrcanus, who thus closed a life of extraordinary vicissitude, borne with constitutional indolence, by a violent death.

This done, Herod committed the government to his brother Pheroras; sent his mother, sister, and children to Masada; and committed Mariamne and her mother to the charge of his faithful partisans, Soemus and Joseph, in the fortress of Alexandrion, with the same extraordinary injunctions which he had before left, that, in case of his death, Mariamne should be despatched. He then set sail for Rhodes. He appeared before the conqueror, without the diadem, but with all the dignity of an independent sovereign. He addressed him in a speech, which, disdaining apology, enlarged on his obligations, and avowed his attachment, to Antony. He declared that, as a friend, he had given him the best advice; such advice as might have made him again formidable to Cæsar; he had begged him to put Cleopatra to death, and vigorously resume the war. "Antony," he pursued, "adopted a counsel more fatal to himself, more advantageous to you. If, then, attachment to Antony be a crime, I plead guilty; but if, having thus seen how steady and faithful I am in my friendships, you determine to bind me to your fortunes by gratitude, depend on the same firmness and fidelity." This