At this time, the monarch of the Roman world was Caius Caesar, commonly
known by his surname, Caligula. Among the first acts of a reign,
whose outset was deservedly popular for its numerous manifestations of
prudence and benevolence, forming a strange contrast with subsequent
tyranny and folly, was the advancement of a tried and faithful friend,
to the regal honors and power which his birth entitled him to claim,
and from which the neglectful indifference at first, and afterwards the
revengeful spite of the preceding Caesar, Tiberius, had long excluded
him. This was Herod Agrippa, grandson of that great Herod, who, by
the force of his own exalted genius, and by the favor of the imperial
Augustus, rose from the place of a friendless foreign adventurer, to
the kingly sway of all Palestine. This extensive power he exercised
in a manner which was, on the whole, ultimately advantageous to
his subjects; but his whole reign, and the later years of it more
particularly, were marked by cruelties the most infamous, to which he
was led by almost insane fits of the most causeless jealousy. On none
of the subjects of his power, did this tyrannical fury fall with such
frequent and dreadful visitations, as on his own family; and it was
there, that, in his alternate fits of fury and remorse, he was made the
avenger of his own victims. Among these numerous domestic cruelties,
one of the earliest, and the most distressing, was the murder of the
amiable Mariamne, the daughter of the last remnants of the Asmonaean
line,――
“Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honored race,”
which Herod’s remorseless policy had exterminated. Her he made his wife,
and after a few years sacrificed her to some wild freak of jealousy,
only to reap long years of agonizing remorse for the hasty act, when
a cooler search had shown, too late, her stainless innocence. But a
passionate despot never yet learned wisdom by being made to feel the
recoil of his own folly; and in the course of later years this cruelty
was equalled, and almost outdone, by a similar act, committed by him
on those whom her memory should have saved, if anything could. The
innocent and unfortunate Mariamne left him two sons, then mere children,
whom the miserable, repentant tyrant, cherished and reared with an
affectionate care, which might almost have seemed a partial atonement
for the injuries of their murdered mother. After some years passed in
obtaining a foreign education at the imperial court of Rome, these two
sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, returned at their father’s summons,
to his court, where their noble qualities, their eloquence and manly
accomplishments, as well as the interest excited by their mother’s fate,
drew on them the favorable and admiring regard of the whole people. But
all that made them admirable and amiable to others, was as powerless
as the memory of their mother, to save them from the fury of the
suspicious tyrant. Those whose interests could be benefited by such a
course, soon found means to make them objects of jealousy and terror
to him, and ere long involved them in a groundless accusation of
conspiring against his dominion and life. The uneasiness excited in
Herod by their great popularity and their commanding talents, led
him to believe this charge; and the miserable old tyrant, driven
from fear to jealousy, and from jealousy to fury, at last crowned
his own wretchedness and their wrongs, by strangling them both, after
an imprisonment of so great a length as to take away from his crime
even the shadowy excuse of hastiness. This was one of the last acts
of a bloody life; but ere he died, returning tenderness towards the
unfortunate race of Mariamne, led him to spare and cherish the infant
children of Aristobulus, the younger of the two, who left three sons
and two daughters to the tender mercies of his cruel father. One of
these was the person who is concerned in the next event of Peter’s life,
and whose situation and conduct in reference to that affair, was such
as to justify this prolonged episode. He received in infancy the name
of Agrippa, out of compliment to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the favorite
and minister of Augustus Caesar, and the steady friend of the great
Herod. This name was exclusively borne by this son of Aristobulus in
childhood, nor was it ever displaced by any other, except by some of
the Jews, who, out of compliment to the restoration of the Herodian
line of kings, in place of the Roman sub-governors, gave him the name
of his royal grandfather, so that he is mentioned only by the name
of Herod in the story of the Acts of the Apostles; but the Romans and
Greeks seem to have known him only by his proper name of Agrippa. The
tardy repentance of his grandfather did not extend to any important
permanent provision for the children of Aristobulus; but on his death a
few years after, they were left with the great majority of the numerous
progeny of Herod, to the precarious fortunes of dependent princes. The
young Agrippa having married his own cousin, Cypros, the daughter of a
daughter of Herod and Mariamne, sailed to Rome, where he remained for
several years, a sort of beggar about the court of Tiberius Caesar,
through whose favor he hoped for an advancement to some one of the
thrones in Palestine, which seemed to be prizes for any of Herod’s
numerous descendents who could best secure the imperial favor, and
depress the possessors in the Caesar’s opinion. Passing at Rome and
elsewhere through a romantic variety of fortune, this adventurer was
at last lucky in securing to himself the most friendly regard of Caius
Caesar, then the expected successor of the reigning emperor. This
afterwards proved the basis of his fortunes, which for a while, however,
were darkened by the consequences of an imprudent remark made to Caius,
expressive of a wish for the death of Tiberias, which was reported
to the jealous tyrant by a listening slave, and finally caused the
speaker’s close imprisonment during the rest of the emperor’s life.
The death of Tiberius, followed by the accession of Caius Caesar to
the throne, raised Agrippa from his chains to freedom, and to the
most intimate favor of the new monarch. The tetrarchy of Iturea and
Trachonitis, then vacant by the death of Philip, was immediately
conferred on him; and soon after, Herod Antipas having been exiled, his
territories, Galilee and Peraea, were added to the former dominions of
Herod Agrippa, and with them was granted to him the title of _king_,
which had never yet been given to any of the descendents of Herod the
Great. In this state were the governments of these countries at the
time of the events last narrated; but Herod Agrippa, often visiting
Rome, left all Palestine in the hands of Publius Petronius, the
just and benevolent Roman president of Syria. In this state, affairs
remained during all the short reign of Caius Caligula Caesar, who,
after four years mostly characterized by folly, vice and cruelty, ended
his days by the daggers of assassins. But this great event proved no
check to the flourishing fortunes of his favorite, king Herod Agrippa;
who, in the course of the events which ended in placing Claudius on
the throne, so distinguished himself in the preliminary negociations
between the new emperor and the senate, sharing as he did the
confidence and regard of both parties, that he was justly considered by
all, as the most active means of effecting the comfortable settlement
of their difficulties; and he was therefore deemed well deserving
of the highest rewards. Accordingly, the first act of Claudius’s
government, like the first of Caligula’s, was the presentation of a
new kingdom to this favorite of fortune,――Judea being now added to
the other countries in his possession, and thus bringing all Palestine
into one noble kingdom, beneath his extensive sway. With a dominion
comprising all that the policy of his grandfather had been able to
attain during a long and active life, he now found himself, at the
age of fifty-one, one of the most extraordinary instances of romantic
fortune that had ever occurred; and anxious to enjoy something of the
solid pleasure of visiting and governing his great and flourishing
kingdom, he set sail from Rome, which had been so long to him the
scene of such varied fortune, such calamitous poverty and tedious
imprisonment,――and now proceeded as the proud king of Palestine, going
home in triumph to the throne of his ancestor, supported by the most
boundless pledges of imperial favor. The emperor Claudius, though
regretting exceedingly the departure of the tried friend whom he had
so much reason to love and cherish, yet would not detain him from
a happiness so noble and desirable, as that of arranging and ruling
his consolidated dominion. Even his departure, however, was made the
occasion of new marks of imperial favor; for Claudius gave him letters
by which all Roman governors were bound to acknowledge and support him
as the rightful sovereign of Palestine. He arrived in Palestine shortly
after, and just before the passover, made his appearance in Jerusalem,
where he was received with joy and hope by the expecting people, who
hailed with open hearts a king whose interests would be identified
with theirs, and with the glory of the Jewish name. His high and
royal race,――his own personal misfortunes and the unhappy fate of
his early-murdered father, as well as his descent from the lamented
Mariamne,――his well-known amiability of character, and his regard for
the holy Jewish faith, which he had shown by exerting and even risking
all his favor with Caligula to prevent, in co-operation with the
amiable Petronius, the profanation of the temple as proposed by the
erection of the emperor’s statue within it,――all served to throw a most
attractive interest around him, and to excite brilliant hopes, which
his first acts immediately more than justified. The temple, though now
so resplendent with the highest ♦achievements of art, and though so
vast in its foundations and dimensions, was still considered as having
some deficiencies, so great, that nothing but royal munificence could
supply them. The Jews therefore seized the fortunate occasion of the
accession of their new and amiable monarch to his throne, to obtain the
perfection of a work on which the hearts of the people were so much set,
and the completion of which would so highly advance the monarch in the
popular favor. The king at once benignantly heard their request, and
gladly availing himself of this opportunity to gratify his subjects,
and secure a regard from them which might some day be an advantage to
him, immediately ordered the great work to proceed at his expense. The
satisfaction of the people and the Sanhedrim was now at the highest
pitch; and, ♠emboldened by these displays of royal favor, some of the
sage plotters among them hoped to obtain from him a favorable hearing
on a matter which they deemed of still deeper importance to their
religion, and in which his support was equally indispensable. This
matter brings back the forsaken narrative to consideration.
♦ “achievments” replaced with “achievements”
♠ “emboldenened” replaced with “emboldened”
_Herod Agrippa._――All the interesting details of this richly
romantic life, are given in a most delightful style by Josephus.
(Antiquities, XVIII. v. 3,‒viii. 9. and XIX. i‒ix.) The same
is more concisely given by the same author in another place.
(Jewish War, II. ix. 5,‒xi. 6.) The prominent events of
Petronius’s administration, are also given in the former.