The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

which was to patch over the contradiction, in truth exposed it all the more sharply.
Later on we may venture a guess [in answer] to the question from where does the
insertion originate; but it should be pointed out already at this point that these are purely
personal experiences, which are being reported about Herod, and that one senses clearly that
the sympathies of the [the author] who first drafted such a report lay with Herod.
13. Herod in Rome
War 274 - 285 = Ant. 370 - 389
Herod had to continue in his flight before Antigonus who was supported by the
Parthians in Jerusalem. He flees to Arabia and to Egypt where he decides to travel to Rome still
in the middle of winter in order to gain the assistance of the powerful empire. He reaches
Pamphylia and [then arrives] in Rome via Rhodes. The two sources (War 274 - 280 = Ant. 370 -
378) again correspond completely except for one minor incidental detail [Nebenzug]: in Rhodes,
which remained battered by the war against Cassius, War 280 relates that Herod, despite his
lack of money, built a massive trireme in which he travelled to Italy; Ant. 378 reinterpreted this
idea by having Herod rebuild the destroyed [town of] Rhodes despite his lack of money and
instead construct only an ordinary trireme, not one [that was] massive. The relationship
between the sources is to change, however, when we see Herod arriving in Rome. Here Herod
was indeed to acquire the royal crown of Judaea and it is clear, if our remarks are correct up to
now, that the shift in Josephus’ attitude towards the Herodians is to be recognized in this
policy reversal [Wendepunkt der Politik] whereby the Jews received a ruler who was foreign to
their land. Our expectation is not to be disappointed!
According to War 282, when Herod arrived in Rome Antony sympathized with him, and
since he [194] remembered Antipater’s hospitality on the one hand, but on the other he had
also become acquainted with Herod’s virtue, he therefore decided to make Herod king of the
Jews. The antagonism towards Antigonus, whom Antony viewed as an enemy of the Romans,
was also decisive for him, however. When Josephus had become an enemy of the Herodians, he
could retain the report mentioned [above] only partly: Antony’s sympathy was admittedly
harmless in principle, but in order to discourage any idea that Herod’s character was perhaps
and are thus inextricably bound together.
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