HERODK3, TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS ATTICUS. 



1IKI10DOTUS. 



continued to increase, but the Utter put of hi* reign wu disturbed 

 by the mo*t violent diiMaiions in hi* family, of which a minute 

 amount is given by Joeephus. He died in March B.C. 4, in the thirty- 

 fourth year of hit reign and the seventieth of hi* age. Jotephu* 

 relate. that .hortly before hi* death he shut up many of the prlottpa] 

 IBM of the Jewish nation in the Hippodrome, commanding hi* sister 

 Salome to put them to death as toon a* he expired, that he might not 

 want mourner*. They were released however by Salome upon Herod'* 



talk 



The birth of Jesus ChrUt took pltce in the but year of Herod* 

 reign four yean earlier than the era from which the common system 

 of chronology date* the yean A.D. (Clinton, ' Fasti Hellenic!.') 



II HEROD AJITIPAS, son of Herod the Great, wa appointed by hi* 

 father'* will tetraroh of Galilee and Penea, [ARCHELAUS.] He built 

 the city of Tiberias. About A.D. 26 ho divorced the daughter of 

 AreUs, king of Arabia, and married hi* sister-in-law Herodia*. John 

 the Baptist, having remonstrated against this marriage, was imprisoned 

 in the castle of Machserus, and afterward* put to death. (Luke iii. 19, 

 20 ; Mark TL 17-29.) About the same time Aretas marched against 

 Antipas and defeated him. In A.D. 89 Antipas was accused by Agrippa, 

 king of Judaea, of a secret understanding with the Parthians, and was 

 banUhed by Caligula to Lyon. 



III. HEBOD AORIFPA, son of Aristpbulus and grandson of Herod the 

 Great, after experiencing many vicissitudes in early Ufo, was appointed, 

 upon the accession of Caligula, king of the dominions formerly held 

 by Philip, namely, Gaulanitis, Batanea, and Trachouitis, to which 

 Caligula added the tetrarchy of Lysonias ; and afterwards, when 

 Antipas was banished, the tetrarchy of Galilee and Penea. Claudius 

 ad'li d Judica and Samaria to his dominion*. HU government was 

 popular with the Jews, to please whom he persecuted the Christians. 

 (Act* xii. 1-3.) He died of a loathsome disease at Cajsarea, in the third 

 year of his reign over all Palestine, A.D. 44. (Acts xii. 20-23.) 



IV HEROD AORIPPA, sou of the above, was seventeen years old at 

 the time of his father's death. Upon the death of Herod, king of 

 Chalcis, four years afterwards, Claudius bestowed that kingdom upon 

 Agrippa. He did not leave Rome till A.D. 53, when Claudius gave 

 him the tetrarchics of Gaulanitis, Batanea, and Trachonitis. Hi* 

 dominions were enlarged by Nero. It was in A.D. 60 that the trial of 

 Paul before Agrippa took place. (Acts XXVL) Agrippa exerted him- 

 self to the utmost to keep down the spirit of revolt which was now 

 constantly increasing among the Jews. When war broke oul^ Agrippa 

 joined the Romans. After the taking of Jerusalem he retired with 

 his sister Berenice to Rome, where he died at the age of about seventy 



y8 HERO'DES, TIBETUUS CLA'UDIUS ATTICUS, a native of 

 Marathon, in Attica, and of an illustrious family, which numbered 

 among its' members several officers and magistrates of the latter period 

 of the Athenian commonwealth, was born under the reign of Trujan. 

 He inherited from his father Atticus a very large property. Atticue, 

 it is said, discovered one day in his grounds, in or near Athens, a vast 

 treasure, probably hidden there during the preceding war*. He 

 informed the then emperor Norva of what he had found, and was 

 told to do with it as he pleased. In consequence of this, Atticus left 

 his son Herodes possessed of enormous wealth. Herodes was educated 

 by the best teacher* of his time : he studied under Favorinus and 

 Polemon, and he became an accomplished scholar, rhetorician, and 

 philosopher. He was made by Antoninus Pius prefect of the Greek 

 towns of Asia, Having removed to Rome, his wealth, his connections, 

 and his extempore eloquence, which is spoken of as wonderful, gave 

 him a considerable degree of importance, and he was made consul with 

 C. Bellicius Torquatus, A.D. 143. He was also one of the preceptors of 

 the younger Verus, tho adopted son of Antoninus. Herodes married 

 at Home Annia Regilla, of an illustrious and wealthy family. She bore 

 him four children, and died while pregnant of the fifth. His brother- 

 in-law suspected Herodes, who was of a violent and jealous temper, 

 of foul treatment of his wife, and he brought him to trial on the 

 charge of murder ; but Herodes was acquitted. Herodes displayed 

 an excessive, and, a* some believed, an assumed grief for the loss of 

 his wife, and he dedicated her estate to Minerva and Nemesis. An 

 inscription which he wroto, or caused to be written, in Greek hexa- 

 meters, records the fact There is another inscription, likewise in 

 Qreek verve, in which the poet invites the Roman women to honour 

 the memory of Regilla, descanting upon her beauty, virtue, and high 

 lineage : he speaks of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whom he com- 

 pare* to Jupiter, for the consolation which he administered to the 

 widower in hi* old age, left with two young surviving children, upon 

 one of whom, named Atticus, the emperor bestowed the patrician and 

 senatorial sandals, or shoes spangled with stars and ornamented with 

 a crescent, which custom of the Roman patricians the poet derives 

 from Mercury. He then launches out into mythological allusions, and 

 speak* of his own descent from tho Athenian heroes and demigods. 

 The whole composition, as well a* the one previously mentioned, is 

 curious as a memorial of the Greco-Roman style of poetry in the age 

 of the Autonines. These two inscriptions, which arc on two large 

 slab* of Greek marble, and were discovered in the early part of the 

 17th century, under Pope Paul V. (Borghese), have given much 

 employment to critics and philologist*. (Visconti, Iscrizioni Tropee 

 on Borgheaiane,' 4to, Rome, 1794.) Herodes, after the loss of his 



wife, returned to Greece, and died at Marathon, in the seventy-sixth 

 year of his age, towards the end of the reign of Aurelius, or the 

 beginning of that of Commodiu. He erected monuments, temples, 

 batha, and aqueducts, in Italy, Greece, and Asia. Pausauias (vii. 2tl) 

 mentions an Odeon, or Music Theatre, at Athena, as built by him, 

 called tho Theatre of Regilla, after his wife : he slso embellished the 

 Stadium, near the Ilissua, which was originally constructed by the 

 orator Lycurgus, B.C. 350. Herodes was evidently a conspicuous 

 personage in the age in which he lived, and is mentioned as such by 

 Aulus Gellius, Philostratus, Capitolinus, Zouaras, Suidas, and a number 

 of others. (Fiorillo, ' Herodia Attici qua> supersuut,' 8vo, Leipzig, 

 1801.) Herodes is said by Philostratus to nave written orations, 

 epistles, and ephemoridea ; but none of these compositions have come 

 down to us except a fragment of an address to the Tbebaus, published 

 by Reiske, Leipzig, 1773 ; but its genuineness is doubted by the critics. 

 In the inscription above mentioned, in honour of his wife, he is styled 

 " the living language of Athens," and "the king of oratory." His sou 

 Atticus is said to have been a complete idiot all his life. 



HERODIA'NUS, a Greek author, who wrote a history, in eight 

 books, of the Roman emperors who reigned successively in his Ufa- 

 time, beginning with the death of Marcus Aurelius, A.D. 180, and 

 ending with the accession of the younger Gordianus, in 238. This 

 history comprehends a period of little more than half a century, but 

 it is a most eventful one in the history of the empire, on account of 

 the numerous and violent changes in the persons who held the 

 sovereign power, and also with respect to the domestic and foreign 

 wars, the depravity of manners, and the public calamities which 

 characterised that age. The series of emperors which the history of 

 Herodianus embraces comprises Commodus, Pertinax, Julianua, Niger 

 and Albinus, Sevc-rus, Caracalla and Geta, Macriuus, Elagabalus, 

 Alexander Sevt rua, Maximius, the two Gordiaui, and Balbinus. The 

 style of Herodianus is plain and unaffected, and his narrative in 

 general seems written in a spirit of sincerity, but it has no claims to 

 philosophy or critical art. (F. A. Wolf, ' Norratio de Herodiano et 

 libro ejus,' prefixed to his edition of Herodianus, Halle, 1792.) Of 

 the private history of Heriodianus we know nothing, except that he 

 seems to have lived at Rome, and to have been well acquainted not 

 only with the political events, but also with the court intrigues and 

 scandal of his time. He is the last of the Greek historians of antiquity 

 who lived before the partition of the Roman empire. Among the 

 editions of his history that of Irmisch, in 5 vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1789- 

 1805, in Greek and Latin, contains numerous notes, chronological 

 and genealogical tables, and several copious indexes. The last edition 

 and the best text is by Bekker, Berlin, 1826, 8vo. There aro several 

 German translations of Herodian. 



HERO'DOTUS, a native of Halicarnassus, a Dorian city in Caria, 

 and once a member of the confederation called the Hexapolis, or Six 

 Cities, was born about B.C. 484. If the passages in his own History 

 (i. 130; iil 15) were written by himself, he was probably alive in 

 B.c. 408. The facts of his life ore few and doubtful, except so far as 

 we can collect them from his own works. He was the son of Lyxus 

 and Dryo, and of an illustrious family in his native state. Not liking 

 the government of Lygclamis (the grandson of the heroic Artemisia), 

 who was tyrant of Halicarnassus, he retired for a time to Samos, where 



Coin of Ualicarnassus. 

 British Museum. Actual size. Silver. Weight 50 grains. 



he is said to have cultivated the Ionic dialect of the Greek, which 

 was the language of that island. Before he was thirty yean of age 

 ho joined iu an attempt, which proved successful, to expel Lygdami.". 

 But the banishment of the tyrant did not give tranquillity to Holi- 

 caruassus, and Herodotus, who himself hod become an object of 

 dislike, again left his native country, and joined, as it is said, a colony 

 which the Athenians sent to Thurium, in South Italy (B.C. 448). He 

 is said to have died at Thurium, and was buried in the Agora. (Suidas, 

 'H/MJSoros, Havvaais, 0ouKi/5i5iji; Strabo, xiv., p. 656; Photius, 'Bibl.,' 

 60.) Herodotus presents himself to our consideration in two points 

 of view ; as a traveller and observer, and aa an historian. The extent 

 of his travels may be ascertained pretty clearly from his History, but 

 the order in which he visited each place and the time cannot be 

 determined. The story of his reading his work at the Olympic games, 

 which has found its way into most modern narratives, has been well 

 discussed by Dahlmann, and we may perhaps say disproved. (Herodot, 

 ' Aus seinem Bucho seiu Leben,' Altona). The story is founded on a 

 small piece by Lucian (' Ed. Reiz.,' 4to, p. 831), entitled ' Herodotus 

 or Aetion,' which apparently was not intended by the writer him.-rlf 

 as an historical truth ; and in addition to this, Herodotus was only 

 about twenty-eight years old when he is said to have read to the 

 assembled Greeks at Olympia a work which was the result of most 

 extensive travelling and research, and bears in every part of it evident 



