Herod the Procurator - Richard Carrier

conjecture of Coele-Syria for “all Syria”), simply because what Josephus said entailed
something “more extensive and important” than Richardson thought possible. Since then
only Anthony Barrett has gotten close to a correct analysis of the matter , which
corroborates what I will argue here. 54
The Meaning of ‘Procurator’
All this brings us back to Walter Otto, who writes that “Augustus instructed the of ficials
[den Beamten] of the Roman government in Syria to handle af fairs there solely in
agreement with Herod, but of course gave no legal authority over the province to the
vassal Herod, although a passage in Josephus seems to suggest this.” 55 He then elaborates
in a lengthy footnote what he means, the most anyone had ever written on the subject
(until Barrett). My translation of his note follows:
The passages are obscure, and in the one from the AJ something is
probably missing, but in any case it seems impossible to me to read
epitropos here in the technical sense of procurator, not only because it is a
Roman of fice, but simply the fact that Herod is being granted this title
(just as, e.g., in Caesar ’s grant of such a position to Herod’ s father ,
Antipater, the word epitropos is not used by Josephus in its technical
meaning, cf. BJ I 199: pasês epitropos Ioudaias; also AJ XIV 143 and
166). Naturally it is completely impossible to conclude from this, with
Gardthausen, op. cit. I 818, that Herod was appointed chief tax-farmer of
Syria [on which see below—ed.]. And it’s undesirable to change holês in
the BJ to Koilês (as suggested by Marquardt, Röm. St.-V. 2 I 408, 2, but he
incorrectly assesses the whole position of Herod), so one must take the
passage from the BJ as a huge exaggeration, since it results in the
impossibility of putting the vassal Herod over an entire Roman province
(cf. p. 19, where the same impossibility has already been rejected once),
and instead base the facts on the passage in the AJ (particularly the word
gnômê, the symboulia in the BJ representing yet another amplification).
54 See Barrett, op. cit. (though correct and valuable in his analysis, he is hesitant to declare a certain
conclusion because, I believe, he overlooks the fact that, as we shall see, in principle and in practice the
same person could be appointed both procurator and prefect, and Josephus only says that Herod was
appointed the one, not the other; by contrast, Eck, op. cit., correctly detects the fact of dual appointment,
but doesn’t discuss Herod in this connection, as he only treats events after 6 A.D.).
55 Walter Otto, “Herodes,” Paulys Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Suppl. II,
1913, p. 71.
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