according to which the famed Jewish heroine, Judith, of c. 700 BC (conventional dating), has been strangely projected into a (artificial, I believe) c. 900 AD scenario, as Judith (or Gudit), complete with some Judith-like named ancestors.
The kingdom of Axum (or Aksum), I have concluded, appears to have been substituted for the ancient kingdom of Assyria (both in the case of Gudit and that of Mohammed).
Illig also reports on the conspicuous similarities between the Byzantine state of affairs of the 7th and the 10th centuries.
“Around the year 600 AD the advancing Avars weaken the imperial realm militarily on the Balkan peninsula”, he writes.
Let us not forget: with the correction of the 300 years the time of the advancement of the Avars coincides with the advancement of the Magyars. Since Byzantium will need to involve itself in another conflict with yet another strong northern enemy, this time in the beginning of the 900’s and the Magyars, there is a strong suspicion that the entire Avar era is nothing but a chronologically predated duplicate of the Magyar reconquest.
Illig refers to Manfred Zeller, who in his work about the steppe peoples points out: “the number of these horse peoples doubles in the 1st millennium, filling up the empty centuries!” Hence the Avars are simply just a duplicate. They are nothing other than a nation created from one of the adjectives used to describe the Hun-Magyars and its only purpose was to fill out the empty centuries. The rich archaeological finds admired under the Avar name might as well be the legacy of the Huns of Attila.
But let us return to Byzantium:
in 602 a frightening and talentless figure sits on the Byzantine throne in the person of Phokas, who can only come to power by regicide. Husrau II, the Persian king takes advantage of the favouring moment and attacks Byzantium, allegedly to avenge the death of the emperor. Although in 610 Heracleitos topples the terror reign of Phokas, the relentless advance of the Persians continues: they conquer East Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and via the shores of North Africa march all the way to Tripoli. The taking of Jerusalem and the capture of the Holy Cross takes place on May 22, 614 AD, after three weeks of siege. It is interesting to note, that Heracleitos has a co-ruler, his own son, who is crowned already at two years of age, but who lives in the shadow of his father for a long time without any real executive powers. When he finally and belatedly comes to genuine power, suddenly his wasting existence ends. The person in question is none other than Constantine III. On top of it all, this is the very same Constantine III also mentioned in the Chronicon Pictum in connection with the dating of the Magyar reconquest:
“… hundred and four years after the death of the Hungarian king Attila, in the time of emperor Constantinus III and pope Zachary – as it is written in the chronicles
of the Romans – the Magyars emerged a second time out of Scythia…”
Very strange it is that the author of the Chronicon Pictum manages to find the Byzantine emperor at the time of the Magyar reconquest to be an emperor living in the 600’s!
As we know, according to the theory of Illig the fictitious centuries start the year 614, that is, not long after the capturing of the Holy Cross. Constantine III is already crowned co-ruler, yet he is only three years old. The time when he comes to genuine power, actually already takes place in the phantom era.
If Illig’s theory is correct, then Constantine III has to appear in some form also in the 10th century. And lo and behold, the miracle of miracles, in the 10th century we again meet a Constantine – true, this time not III but VII! Indeed, it is the very Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus who in all likelihood was one of the creators of the fictitious centuries.
After all this, Illig starts to examine the 10th century life history of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. The story begins somewhere at the start of the 10th century, when pope Leo is widowed three times within four years, before Zoe gives birth to an illegitimate son. After crowning this boy co-ruler the year before, Leo dies in 912. (It is worthwhile to point out that according to the theory of Illig history starts again in 911, therefore, at the time of the crowning of his illegitimate son in 912, we are again witnessing genuine history take its course!) This boy rises to real power very late, 24 years after his coronation, meaning that up until then others were managing the affairs of the realm, which obviously must have stung in the eyes of the young emperor. In this regard he resembled very much Constantine III, who also got his hands on the governmental reins rather late, and who also was crowned co-ruler by his daddy, the emperor.
At this point who do you think was the illegitimate son of emperor Leo of the 10th century? Indeed, none other than Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus himself!
So there is a conspicuous similarity between the lives of the Constantine (III) of the 7th century and the Constantine (VII) of the 10th century. It is interesting to note, that Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus gives the credit for repossessing the Holy Cross from the Persians not coincidentally to Heracleitos, since by this act he honoured his own (7th century) father, paying homage to his memory. Due to the fact that Heracleitos, by being the father of Constantine III of the 7th century, was in fact also the father of Constantine VII of the 10th century! On top of it all, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus manages things in such a way, that the genuine history more or less starts again from the time of his own coronation!
But not only do the persons of the two Constantines show conspicuous similarities, but also the foreign political affairs of 7th century and 10th century Byzantium. In the 7th century, as I have already mentioned, the Avar advance from the north was afflicting the empire, while the Persian conquests in the east were multiplying the worries of “Constantines” of all ages. In the 10th century it is as if history would repeat itself: from the north the Magyars are disturbing the peace of the empire, while from the southeast the Arab advance is doing the same. This is the point at which a feeling of apprehension starts to boil up inside: is it not possible, that looking at the Avars of the 7th century we actually see the 10th century Magyars? And is it not possible, that the advance of the 10th century Arabs in actual fact is identical with the 7th century Persian advance? If the Byzantine empire in the 7th century had to face the opposition of the Persians and Avars, then these peoples turn into Magyars and Arabs in the 10th century! In connection with the Arab-Persian problem Illig writes the following:
“A certain mystery of art history becomes clear, which asks why there are to be found many more Persian-Syrian than Arab elements in Spain. (…) We no longer have to wonder how a small number of Arabs from oases could succeed in attacking all nations of their time from Spain to the Indus river with such favourable results; this is more to be expected from the Persian armies.”
“And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory
over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius”.
Paul Stephenson
Some of the Greek (Seleucid) history, conventionally dated to the last several BC centuries, appears to have been projected (appropriated) into a fabricated Roman imperial history of the first several AD centuries.
Most notably, in this regard, is the supposed Second Jewish Revolt against emperor Hadrian’s Rome, which – on closer examination – turns out to have been the Maccabean Jewish revolt against Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, of whom emperor Hadrian is “a mirror image”.
See e.g. my series:
Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: “… a mirror image”
Now, last night (2nd December, 2019), as I was reading through a text-like book on Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor (The Overlook Press, NY, 2010), written by Paul Stephenson, I was struck by the similarities between the Dyarchy (Greek δι- “twice” and αρχια, “rule”) – which later became the Tetrarchy (Greek τετραρχία) of the four emperors – on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the Diadochoi following on from Alexander the Great.
Concerning the latter, we read (The Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1968, 75:103): “With Alexander’s death, the leadership of several successors (Diadochoi) was ineffectual, and finally a fourfold division of the empire took place”.
Compare the Roman Tetrarchy with the “fourfold division” of Alexander of Macedon’s empire.
Added to this was the parallel factor of the ‘Great Persecution’ against Christians (c. 300 AD, conventional dating), and, of course, the infamous persecution of the Jews by Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
And I have already pointed to similarities between one of the four Roman emperors, of the time of Constantine, Galerius, and Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
But these are the sorts of similarities of which Paul Stephenson (author of the book on Constantine) is also aware (on p. 128 below he uses the phrase “the remarkable coincidences”).
109:
Lactantius’ On the Deaths of the Persecutors is the best and fullest account of the period 303-13 and this is indispensable. But it is also an angry screed, with no known model in Greek or Latin literature, nor in Christian apologetic. Not only did Lactantius delight in the misfortune and demise of the persecuting emperors, he also attributed them to the intervention of the god of the Christians, defending the interest of the faithful. Such an approach rejected the very premise on which martyrs had accepted death at the hands of their persecutors: that their god did not meddle in earthly affairs to bring misfortune upon Roman emperors. This was the first step in articulating a new Christian triumphalist rhetoric, which we shall explore more fully in later chapters.
In doing so, Lactantius drew on an Old Testament model, the Second Book of Maccabees, which still forms an accepted part of the Orthodox canon. Thus, the opening refrain of each text thanks God for punishing the wicked, and the agonizing death of Galerius mirrors that of Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Maccabees 9). And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius.
127
Lactantius took great pleasure relating [Galerius’] death as divine punishment for his persecutions, describing his repulsive symptoms and the failure of pagan doctors and prayers to heal him.
Here I (Damien Mackey) will take the description from:
“And now when Galerius was in the eighteenth year of his reign, God struck him with an incurable disease. A malignant ulcer formed itself in the secret parts and spread by degree. The physicians attempted to eradicate it… But the sore, after having been skimmed over, broke again; a vein burst, and the blood flowed in such quantity as to endanger his life… The physicians had to undertake their operations anew, and at length they cauterized the wound… He grew emaciated, pallid, and feeble, and the bleeding then stanched. The ulcer began to be insensible to the remedy as applied, and gangrene seized all the neighboring parts. It diffused itself the wider the more the corrupted flesh was cut away, and everything employed as the means of cure served but to aggravate the disease. The masters of the healing art withdrew. Then famous physicians were brought in from all quarters; but no human means had any success… and the distemper augmented. Already approaching to its deadly crisis, it had occupied the lower regions of his body, his bowels came out; and his whole seat putrefied.
The luckless physicians, although without hope of overcoming the malady, ceased not to apply fermentations and administer remedies. The humors having been repelled, the distemper attacked his intestines, and worms were generated in his body. The stench was so foul as to pervade not only the palace, but even the whole city; and no wonder, for by that time the passages from waste bladder and bowels, having been devoured by the worms, became indiscriminate, and his body, with intolerable anguish, was dissolved into one mass of corruption.”
128
… Already dying [Galerius] issued the following edict [ending persecution] ….
…. Lactantius cites the edict in full. The story has much in common with the account of the death of Antiochus, persecutor of the Jews in the Second Book of Maccabees. Lactantius must have been struck by the remarkable coincidences, and borrowed Antiochus’ worms and stench.
….
The plot now thickens, with the heretical Arius also dying a horrible (Antiochus-Galerius) type of death:
275
Under imperial instruction, Arius was to be marched into church and admitted into full communion, but he never made it. Tradition holds that he died on the way, a hideous death reminiscent of Galerius’, which in Lactantius’ account drew heavily upon the death of Antiochus, persecutor of the Jews in 2 Maccabees. ….
Constantine more like ‘Epiphanes’
Some substantial aspects of the life of Constantine seem to have been lifted
right out of the era of king Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’ and the Maccabees.
As briefly noted above:
Constantine’s victory over Maxentius is somewhat reminiscent of the victory over Nicanor by the superb Jewish general, Judas Maccabeus.
“And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius”.
Other comparisons can be drawn as well.
For instance, Constantine’s army, too, was significantly outnumbered by that of his opponent.
Again, after Constantine’s victory the head of Maxentius was publicly paraded:
“His body was recovered, his head removed, then mounted on a lance and paraded triumphantly by Constantine’s men”.
Cf. 2 Maccabees 15:30-33):
Then Judas, that man who was ever in body and soul the chief defender of his fellow citizens, and had maintained from youth his affection for his compatriots, ordered Nicanor’s head and right arm up to the shoulder to be cut off and taken to Jerusalem. When he arrived there, he assembled his compatriots, stationed the priests before the altar, and sent for those in the citadel.
He showed them the vile Nicanor’s head and the wretched blasphemer’s arm that had been boastfully stretched out against the holy dwelling of the Almighty. He cut out the tongue of the godless Nicanor, saying he would feed it piecemeal to the birds and would hang up the other wages of his folly opposite the temple.
Prior to his battle with Nicanor, Judas, according to 2 Maccabees (15:15-16), received from the deceased prophet Jeremiah, in “a dream, a kind of waking vision, worthy of belief” (v. 11), a golden sword.
Stretching out his right hand, Jeremiah presented a gold sword to Judas. As he gave it to him he said, ‘Accept this holy sword as a gift from God; with it you shall shatter your adversaries’.
Could this be the origin (in part) of the Excalibur (King Arthur) legends?
For Constantine apparently occupies a fair proportion of Arthurian legend according to:
Constantine the Great, who in AD 306 was proclaimed Roman emperor in York, forms 8% of Arthur’s story, whilst Magnus Maximus, a usurper from AD 383, completes a further 39%. Both men took troops from Britain to fight against the armies of Rome, Constantine defeating the emperor Maxentius; Maximus killing the emperor Gratian, before advancing to Italy. Both sequences are later duplicated in Arthur’s story.
Earlier, I had likened somewhat the fourfold division of the empire of Alexander the Great and the tetrarchy of Constantine’s reign, including the case of the emperor Galerius with whom I had previously identified Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’.
And, as I pointed out in the following article, historians can find it difficult to distinguish between the buildings of (the above-mentioned) Herod and those of Hadrian:
Of chronological ‘necessity’ they must assume that, as according to this article:
In the later Hadrianic period material from the earlier Herodian constructions was reused, resetting the distinctive “Herodian” blocks in new locations.
…. The first pair of roundels on the south side depicts Antinous, Hadrian, an attendant and a friend of the court (amicus principis) departing for the hunt (left tondo) and sacrificing to Silvanus, the Roman god of the woods and wild (right tondo).
Tondi Adrianei on the Arch of Constantine, Southern side – left lateral, LEFT: Departure for the hunt, RIGHT: Sacrifice to Silvanus
….
The first pair of roundels on the south side depicts a bear hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to the goddess of hunting Diana (right tondo).
….
On the north side, the left pair depicts a boar hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to Apollo (right tondo). The figure on the top left of the boar hunt relief is clearly identified as Antinous while Hadrian, on horseback and about to strike the boar with a spear, was recarved to resemble the young Constantine. The recarved emperor in the sacrifice scene is likely to be Licinius or Constantius Chlorus.
….
Tondi Adrianei on the Arch of Constantine, Northern side – left lateral, LEFT: Boar hunt, RIGHT: Sacrifice to Apollo
….
On the north side, the right pair depicts a lion hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to Hercules (right tondo). The figure of Hadrian in the hunt scene was recut to resemble the young Constantine while in the sacrifice scene the recarved emperor is either Licinius or Constantius Chlorus. The figure on the left of the hunt tondo may show Antinous as he was shortly before his death; with the [first] signs of a beard, meaning he was no longer a young man. These tondi are framed in purple-red porphyry. This framing is only extant on this side of the northern facade. ….
Fred S. Kleiner (A History of Roman Art, p. 326, my emphasis) will go as far as to write that “every block of the arch [of Constantine] were [sic] reused from earlier buildings”:
The Arch of Constantine was the largest erected in Rome since the end of the Severan dynasty nearly a century before, but recent investigations have shown that the columns and every block of the arch were reused from earlier buildings. …. Although the figures on many of the stone blocks were newly carved for this arch, much of the sculptural decoration was taken from monuments of Trajan, Hadrian …. Sculptors refashioned the second-century reliefs to honor Constantine by recutting the heads of the earlier emperors with the features of the new ruler. ….
The highly paganised (Sol Invictus) polytheistic worshipping, family murdering, Constantine makes for – somewhat like Charlemagne – a very strange, exemplary Christian emperor.
And Constantine’s rushed ‘conversion’ during his Persian campaign, just before his death: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/constantine-the-great-a-roman-emperor-history-essay.php “Since he was converted into Christianity later in his life, he was not baptized until a little time before his death. He died on May twenty second, A.D. 337 on the way to campaign against the Persians”, is something of a carbon copy of that of Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, upon his flight from Persia, terminally ill. Besides all this, he would become a Jew himself and visit every inhabited place to proclaim there the power of God.
The whole account of it is, I think, vividly narrated in 2 Maccabees 9:1-29.
Nero, again like Herod, is found slaughtering many innocents.
It is to be expected that an event as cosmically significant, and indeed as colourful, as the Magi’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, to behold and pay homage to the Christ Child, the King of the Jews, would resonate in many world literatures and traditions.
For instance, I have followed Holger Kersten’s perceptive likening of the Magi incident with a famous Buddhist tradition, in my article:
There is an example of a much earlier appropriation of Matthew’s Gospel than this in an event supposedly occurring during the reign of the emperor Nero:
To seal Roman control over Armenia, Nero gave the throne of the country to King Tiridates, but obliged him to travel to Rome to accept it. Tiridates traveled with an entourage of three thousand who, by all accounts passed along their route like a plague of locusts, obliging the countries and provinces that they crossed to feed and support them. Pliny the Elder, Tacitus and Dion Cassius all describe the visit in their histories, with Pliny being cutting in his references, accusing Nero of “carrying out all kinds of stupidity”, but making the interesting comment in Historia Naturalis, 30:6, 16-18:
“Magus ad eum Tiridates venerat Armeniacum de se triumphum adferens et ideo provinciis gravis… quaereat aliquis, quae sint mentiti veteres Magi”.
The Magus Tiridates came to his court… and, with him, brought other Magi.
Tiridates knew his role well and greeted Nero with the words:
I have come to you, my god, who I have worshipped like the Sun
….
Though this supposedly historical incident is taken by some to have been the inspiration for Matthew’s account, I would have it the other way around – a pagan non-history appropriating the Gospel story.
Nero, again like Herod, is found slaughtering many innocents:
Another incident involving the slaughter of innocents concerns the murder of a leading senator in AD 61. ‘The senator was killed in his house’, Thorsten says, ‘and an ancient law stipulated that all of the household slaves should be executed to set a deterrent. There were 400 slaves in the house, so in an extreme case that would mean 399 of them were innocent. Debates were held in the Senate, and the younger senators felt this punishment was too harsh, but the old Senate leaders insisted on upholding the law. The plebs come out in support of the slaves, but Nero ended up backing the senators who wanted to follow the law. They were from key senatorial families who wanted power for themselves. Among them was one of the leading men of the Senate, and his son-in-law was Corbulo: the main Roman commander in the East. …’.
For further connecting between Nero and Herod, see e.g. my article:
Chilperic, the “Nero and Herod of our time” as quoted by Gregory of Tours, was the king of Soissons from 561 until his assassination in 584, an event Gregory seems to cherish, as it ended the reign of “this wicked man”. Gregory’s description of him is very unfavourable throughout the book. From the onset, Chilperic is described as a greedy man who inherited his late father’s treasury, and bribed all the prominent Franks to his side. (IV. 21) He also lusted after women, as he asked for the hand of Galswinth, the sister of his brother’s wife, even though he had a number of wives. He told his messengers to inform the people that he had gotten rid of the other wives, in order for him to marry someone with his own ranking, and with a large dowry. He went back and forth between Galswinth and his other trophy wife Fredegund, before ultimately choosing Galswinth. Ultimately, Galswinth died and within a couple of days, he was asking Fredegund to sleep with him again, and there was strong suspicion he killed Galswinth. (IV 27-8) He charged outrageous taxes for people under his control, and felt no contempt for the poor, rather burdened them with more debt, and banned them from the churches. (VI.46)
Chilperic was also described by Gregory of Tours as being a man of uncontrollable rage and violence. He burned much of the districts around Tours, and marched on Rheims burning and destroying almost everything in his path. (IV. 47)
When his brother Sigibert was killed, Sigila, who was associated with Sigibert’s death was captured by King Chilperic was burned by red hot pincers, and had his limbs torn limb by limb. (IV. 51) Obviously not trying to win a father of the year award, Chilperic had his son Clovis stabbed to death, had his wife Fredegund brutally murdered, and had his daughter thrown into a monastery. (V.1) And the woman who testified against Clovis was burnt alive. People who attempted to desert his city would be cut down and slaughtered by the thousands, and he even poked out people’s eyes for disobedience. In an exceedingly cruel act, Leudast, a man who had fallen on the King’s bad side, and was not allowed to take residence in the city, had his scalp chopped off. Still alive, Chilperic ordered that he receive medical attention until he healed, and then would be tortured to death, done by having a block of wood wedged behind his back while being bludgeoned to death by being repeatedly hit in the throat by another block of wood. (V1.32)
Chilperic was also described as an intolerant man, as he forbade his son Merovich from seeing Sigibert’s widowed wife, whom the King had banished to the city of Rouen and stole her treasure. When they refused to come out of church, Chilperic lied to them in order for them to come out, and took his son home with him, refusing the two to coalesce. When he still chose to defile his fathers [sic] wishes, Chilperic had his son held in exile in a narrow, roofless tower for two years. After these two years, Merovich was forced to become a priest and sent to live in a monastery. Merovich decided to take his life rather than allow his father to constantly dominate his life, so he had his friend Gailen kill him. In retaliation, Gailen was taken by Chilperic and had his hands, feet, ears and nose cut off, and was tortured to death. Anyone who was associated with Merovich were also tortured to death. (V1-18)
One aspect of judgement that Gregory of Tours holds against Chilperic is in regards to religion. Chilperic attacked and destroyed churches along the way, and made a mockery of the Lord.
He even argued Gregory’s religious views by stating to him that there should be no distinctions of Persons in the Holy Trinity. For him, they should all be referred to as God, as if he was a Person, and the Holy Ghost, Father, and Son were one. Gregory of Tours viciously debated his assertion, stating that anyone who agreed with Chilperic would be a fool. Chilperic even begged to the Bishop of Albi to believe his views. (V.44) Gregory of Tours dislike of Chilperic also stems from the fact that the King accused him of levelling wild accusations about his wife. Gregory shows that his judgements of Chilperic are due to the fact that he has been a victim of the Kings outrage. (V.49) Chilperic eventually turned towards Gregory and asked for a blessing to be performed on him. This newfound religious aspect, moved Chilperic to convert a great number of Jews to be baptized, and even carried out a number of baptisms. However, many “converted” Jews resorted to their old faith. He even gave to the churches, and the poor in an effort to show good grace. (V.34)
Overall, by bestowing the unfortunate name of “Nero and Herod” of our time, Gregory of Tours is claiming that King Chilperic was an evil, demonic tyrant, who lusted for power, and reviled in torturing others. His standard of judgement is being a victim himself of Chilperic’s outrage, and having witnessed grave atrocities. Personally, I see a direct link between Chilperic and a later tyrant, and the first tsar of Russia, Ivan Grozny. Ivan IV was a man similar in many ways, in that he had numerous wives, some whom [sic] strangely disappeared, but lusted after one in specific, Anastasia Romanov. More than that, he was a man who disliked the woman whom his son was dating, beat her until she had a miscarriage, and murdered his own son “accidentally”. He even set up the “oprichnina” and had thousands of fleeing citizens to Novgorod cut down and massacred. He was fascinated by torture, and seeing others in grave pain. Much like Chilperic, he would remove people’s eyes, much like he did with the two architects who made a beautiful church monument that outshone all others, and Ivan even found religion later on in life. Aside from my ramblings about similarities, overall I think Chilperic was a brutal man, who committed many acts of greed, gluttony and death, in order to elevate his status, and force obedience from other people. Too call him Nero is a very harsh comparison, but by looking at many of his acts, including the murder of Leudast, it may be deserved, as he was a man not afraid to torture, maim, and kill for his own personal enjoyment. Overall, Gregory is correct in looking down upon Chilperic, as he was a bad man.
….
Finally, Ernest Brehaut (1916) has designated king Chilperic I “the forerunner of the secular state in France”:
….
Gregory calls him “the Nero and Herod of our time,” and loads him with abuse. He ridicules his poems, and according to his own story overwhelms him with an avalanche of contempt when he ventures to state some new opinions on the Trinity. The significant thing about Chilperic was this, that he had at this time the independence of mind to make such a criticism, as well as the hard temper necessary to fight the bishops successfully. “In his reign,” Gregory tells us, “very few of the clergy reached the office of bishop.”
Chilperic used often to say:
“Behold our treasury has remained poor, our wealth has been transferred to the churches; there is no king but the bishops; my office has perished and passed over to the bishops of the cities.” [note: see p. 166 (Book VI: 46)] Chilperic was thus the forerunner of the secular state in France.
Wife, Fredegund
“Gregory credited himself with this last role – admittedly more a paradigm than biography – so that he could demonstrate what Marc Reydellet
has observed: ‘Gregory of Tours covers himself in the robe of the prophet
in order to cast anathema on the diabolical couple Chilperic and Fredegund, the new Ahab and Jezebel’.”
It is amazing just how many kings of the (supposedly) AD era have been described as Ahab-like, or as Nero-like, or as Herod-like, whilst any number of queens, especially those named Isabelle, have been likened to Jezebel or Herodias – so much so that I was prompted to ask:
…. Here is the most cartoonishly evil woman I have ever come across: Fredegund. This woman was a 6th-century Merovingian queen consort with a penchant for killing people. Her notable life went roughly as follows:
She works her way into the palace of Chilperic I as a serving woman for the queen, Audovera.
Chilperic I, although married to Audovera, takes Fredegund as a concubine.
Fredegund convinces him to divorce Audovera and send her to a nunnery.
Fredegund then quietly kills Audovera.
Chilperic then marries another woman, Galswintha.
Galswintha turns up strangled in her own bed.
Chilperic marries Fredegund a couple days later, presumably getting the hint.
Fredegund kills Chilperic’s brother Sigebert (the two brothers had been fighting). She also tries to kill Sigebert’s son.
Chilperic turns up mysteriously dead.
Immediately thereafter, Fredegund takes all his money, skips town, and starts living in Notre Dame Cathedral (sanctuary, indeed!) under the protection of Chilperic’s brother, Guntram.
Three years later she tries to assassinate Guntram.
Ten years later, Fredegund dies (how, I do not know).
If Fredegund had a foil, it was Galswintha’s sister (and Sigebert’s widow), Brunhild. For forty years, the two of them fought — resulting in endless warfare and, you can be sure, at least one assassination attempt.
In the end, Brunhild outlived Fredegund, but even from beyond the grave, Fredegund had the last word.
Mackey’s comment: Brunhild, too, has, for her part, been described as a ‘Jezebel”:
Sixteen years after Fredegund’s death, with Brunhild now a sixty-something woman, Fredegund’s son killed her in as brutal a manner as I’ve ever heard. First, torture on the rack.
Next, each of her extremities was tied to a different horse, and they were all set to run in different directions, tearing her apart. Lastly, they burnt her body.
But none of these are the craziest thing Fredegund ever did.
“Hey Rigunth, go pick out some jewelry from that treasure chest.”
So what is the craziest thing she ever did? Well, you see, she had a daughter, Rigunth. Rigunth, as princesses do, was looking forward to one day being queen herself. One day, exasperated by her daughter’s “I want to be queen nowww” whining, Fredegund told her to go look inside Chilperic’s treasure chest and pick out some jewelry for herself.
When Rigunth poked her head in the treasure chest, Fredegund slammed it shut on her neck. Had servants not stopped her, she would have killed her own daughter.
“Vengeance” is also well to the fore in the following lively account of queen Fredegund:
The Frankish Queen Fredegund is a rare exception to this rule – and, oddly enough, it’s not because historians portray her in a positive light. No, with this chick it’s because she truly was an utterly-bloodthirsty vengeance machine who rested at nothing short of the completely over-the-top torture deaths of all who stood in her path, obliterating dumbasses across the continent of Europe until every single human being – from King to Bishop to Peasant – who stupidly wound up on her bad side immediately found themselves face-down in a pool of their own blood surrounded by knife-wielding assassins, poisonous beverages, and/or well-sharpened instruments of painful torture and horrible mutilation.
She is one of history’s most violent and bloodthirsty queens, and her entire life was centered around the one primary tenet of unquestionable badassitude – Live for Revenge.
We don’t know much about where one of the world’s most epic vengeance-mongers actually came from. We’re pretty sure Fredegund (also known as Fredegond, Fredegunda, or simply Freddie) was Frankish, meaning that she was simultaneously French, German, and Belgian without actually being any of those things, and that when she was in her late teens she was sold as a slave to the wife of King Chilperic of Souissons – a guy who at the time sort-of ruled a piece of the Frankish Kingdom (when Chilperic’s dad died, he’d divided his empire up among his sons rather than putting one kid in charge of the entire kingdom…
….
Well Fredegund wasn’t all that particularly interested in being a servant-girl to the Queen, so instead … she seduced King Chilperic, hooked up with him, then convinced him to divorce the Queen and send that annoying primadonna off to live a life of celibacy in a convent somewhere. Unfortunately for Freddie, once the king was divorced he decided to marry some annoying Visigoth Princess instead, so once again Fredegund worked her magic and had that bitch strangled to death in her sleep.
After all the competition was dead or nunnified, Chilperic decided it was in the best interest of self-preservation to marry Fredegund, a woman who had now somehow awesomely gone from slave-girl to Queen of the Franks in the span of like a year and a half.
Well, naturally being the Queen was great and everything, but now Fredegund had a new problem to worry about – the hardcore sister of the recently-strangulated Visigoth Queen just so happened to be a … warrior-babe named Brunhilde, and Brunhilde was not a very happy girl. Brunhilde also just so happened to be a Queen in her own right, married to Chilperic’s brother Siegebert, a guy who was in charge of another part of the recently-divided Frankish Kingdom (still with me here?), and before long the two factions were in the process of stabbing each other in the face repeatedly and without mercy in an all-out war that stretched from Paris to Berlin.
Long story short, Chilperic/Fredegund fought an epic seven-year war with Siegebert/ Brunhilde, with either side sending their mailed knights charging spears-first into combat …. After a hard-fought campaign, Fredegund defeated her rivals, crushed them in battle, then had King Siegebert whacked by stabbing him in the kidneys by a pair of assassins while he was in the process of giving a speech about how he was going to get revenge … [on] Fredegund once and for all (I’m not sure if she planned the timing to work out like that, but it’s badass either way). With the rival King dead, Fredegund overran the rest of Siegebert’s men, captured Brunhilde, destroyed her cities, and then had Siegebert’s top government official (who was admittedly a greedy evil bastard known as “The Breaker of Wills”) executed by being systematically dismembered joint-by-joint with white-hot pokers and knives ….
Fredegund also planned to have Brunhilde whacked as well, but while she was trying to figure out some sort of awesome new cruel and unusual punishment to carry out some … [one] … broke Brunhilde out of prison and snuck her out of the realm.
….
Fredegund eventually tracked that guy down and had him stabbed to death by his own servants, then had his kid poisoned to death by an evil chef just for good measure.
With Brunhilde sort-of out of the way, Fredegund continued her mad rampage to consolidate power for her, her husband, and their now-newborn son.
First she went after the sons of Chilperic’s first wife (you know, the poor girl Fredegund had already exiled to a monastery), killing them by infecting them with dysentery until they died of their own explosive diarrhea. Then she went after some alleged conspirators and other people that talked trash about her, having them executed on torture racks and then throwing their broken bodies to wolves or lions. After that she attacked the clergy, most of whom weren’t all that cool with things like torture-related deaths and were stupid enough to say something like that out loud – first she whacked a dude named Mummolus the Perfect (who, let’s face it, couldn’t have been all that bad), then she publicly yelled at a Catholic Saint (and then silently watched the guy get stabbed and slowly bleed to death in his own cathedral), and, as if that’s not enough, she then tried to ice the Bishop of Bayeux for investigating the murder and sticking his stupid face where it didn’t belong (snitches get stitches).
….
Fredegund’s primary method of disposing of her enemies was by hiring easily-bribeable men to poison or shiv her enemies for her. Thanks to her own personal charm, a collection of dirty secrets that would make Nick Fury want to high-five her, and a nearly-limitless amount of gold at her disposal, the Queen of the Franks routinely hired everyone from Dukes and Priests to slaves and brigands to take up oleander-coated daggers and shank douchebags in her name. Her personal favorite method of execution was to hire a band of thugs armed with heavily-poisoned Swedish eating utensils known as scramsaxes (it even sounds like an IKEA thing) to fall upon her target in the woods … rob them, and leave them to die slow, agonizingly-painful deaths. Then, when the brigands would return to report the kill, Fredegund would have those …. whacked as well, regardless of whether they completed their mission or not (though it’s worth mentioning she’d just behead them with axes at dinner parties if they succeeded, whereas if they failed it was much worse… one poor cleric who failed to execute Brunhilde was punished by having his hands and feet cut off and then being thrown in a hole).
Eventually Fredegund’s enemies got a little fed up with all this nonsense and had her husband Chilperic assassinated (some people think this was Fredegund’s doing as well, but this seems unlikely). With her husband dead and her son still too young to rule, Fredegund fled Soissons to Paris, moved into the cathedral of Notre Dame, and took on the role of Queen Regent, where she controlled the day-to-day operations of the realm.
Now officially in charge of the Kingdom, she ruled with an iron fist, forging alliances, sending armies into the field, and utterly crushing anyone who she considered a threat to either herself or her son.
For the most part, things were pretty successful – she ruled solo for a decade, captured several cities near Paris, allied with the powerful Kingdom of Burgundy, won the throne for her son, and beat … Theodebert who was acting up and causing all sorts of trouble – all of which are notable achievements for anybody, let alone a woman ruling undisputed in the … Middle Ages. She did have a little trouble with her daughter though… Fredegund unwisely tried to marry that poor girl off to the Visigoths, but instead of accepting her into their tribe they just robbed her of her dowry and sent her back to Paris empty-handed. The girl lived at home for a while, and, as can tend to happen with teenaged daughters and their mothers, they didn’t really get along. The highlight of this feud was one time when the daughter came out and said she should be the Queen Regent and Fredegund should retire – Fredegund, who was in the treasure room picking out jewels at the time, asked the daughter to grab something for her out of a particularly-huge treasure chest. When the daughter reached in, Fredegund closed the chest on her head and choked her … until she got her act together. As if you needed more … about this woman, this story was so popular during the Middle Ages that Fredegund is sometimes cited as a possible inspiration for the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella.
Fredegund eventually sorted [things] out with her kid, handed the reins off once her son was old enough to take over as King, and then died peacefully in her bed in Paris in 597 AD. She’d ruled for 40 years, killed everyone who opposed her, and lived for revenge in a way most action movie heroes could only dream about.
The only person who’d successfully eluded her wrath was that annoying do-gooder Brunhilde, but Fredegund’s son eventually settled that … once and for all as well – he captured the 60 year-old queen, put her on the rack for three days, then had her drawn and quartered by horses. His mom would have been proud. ….
“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of
the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius
was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register”.
Luke 2:1-3
Some Background
My proposed collision of Antiochus, Augustus and Hadrian may come across somewhat like the mad mash of ancient history that one will find in the writings of Islamic author, Ahmed Osman.
On this, see e.g. my series:
Osman’s ‘Osmosis’ of Moses. Part One: The Chosen People
The Seleucid king, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ (c. 170 BC), and the supposedly Roman emperors, Augustus (c. 1 AD) and Hadrian (c. 130 AD) – an historical span of some 300 years – all now to be fused as one? Incredible!
In various articles, though, I have built upon the amazing likenesses between ‘Epiphanes’ and Hadrian, prompting scholars to regard the one as being the mirror image of the other:
Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: “… a mirror image”
Added to this is the Jewish tradition that replaces king Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ with Hadrian as the king overseeing the martyrdom of the Maccabean mother and her seven sons.
In conventional terms, this is a gross anachronism – but not according to my scheme.
Hadrian, a supposed Roman, is actually an inveterate Grecophile.
Rome keeps getting in the way, as in the quotation from Luke 2 above, according to which Caesar Augustus had ordered “a census … of the entire Roman world”.
The problem here is that “Roman” is nowhere mentioned in the original text (2:1), … πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην, meaning “the whole world”.
For more on my theme, ‘not all roads leading to Rome’, see e.g. my multi-part series:
Horrible Histories: Retracting Romans. Part One: Still a Republic at time of Herod ‘the Great’
A key point in this whole new reconstruction is my view that the census at the time of the Nativity of Jesus Christ the Messiah, the one issued by Caesar Augustus as considered above, needs to be recognised as being the very same census as the one referred to by rabbi Gamaliel, at the time of Judas the Galilean – the latter, in turn, being the same as Judas Maccabeus, hence a necessary crunching of some 170 years of conventional history.
On this, see e.g. my article:
Judas the Galilean vitally links Maccabean era to Daniel 2’s “rock cut out of a mountain”
A further potential point of correlation for linking, as one, emperors Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, Augustus and Hadrian, is that, associated with each of these names, was a virtually second-self high official capable of standing in for the king – one who exerted power in Palestine.
For Antiochus, it was Philip the Phrygian; for Augustus, it was Herod ‘the Great’, who was also Marcus Agrippa; whilst, for Hadrian, it was Herodes Atticus.
When reading through Anthony Everitt’s 392-page book, Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (Random House, NY, 2009), I was struck by the constant flow of similarities between Hadrian and Augustus – which the author himself does nothing to hide.
Here are some of them:
Pp. 190-191:
Ten years into his reign, Hadrian announced to the world that, speaking symbolically, he was a reincarnation of Augustus.
P. x:
… Augustus, whom Hadrian greatly admired and emulated.
P. 145:
Flatterers said that [Hadrian’s] eyes were languishing, bright, piercing and full of light”. …. One may suspect that this was exactly what Hadrian liked to hear (just as his revered Augustus prided himself on his clear, bright eyes).
P. 190:
… the true hero among his predecessors was Augustus. For the image on Hadrian’s signet ring to have been that of the first princeps was an elegantly simple way of acknowledging indebtedness …. Later, he asked the Senate for permission to hang an ornamental shield, preferably of silver, in Augustus’ honor in the Senate.
P. 191:
What was it that Hadrian valued so highly in his predecessor? Not least the conduct of his daily life. Augustus lived with conscious simplicity and so far as he could avoided open displays of his preeminence.
P. 192:
Both Augustus and Hadrian made a point of being civiles principes, polite autocrats. …. Whenever Augustus was present, he took care to give his entire attention to the gladiatorial displays, animal hunts, and the rest of the bloodthirsty rigmarole. Hadrian followed suit.
P. 193:
Hadrian followed Augustus’ [consulship] example to the letter – that is, once confirmed in place, he abstained. …. Hadrian’s imitation of Augustus made it clear that he intended to rule in an orderly and law-abiding fashion … commitment to traditional romanitas, Romanness.
It was on these foundations that he would build the achievements of his reign. Like the first princeps, Hadrian looked back to paradigms of ancient virtue to guide modern governance. Augustus liked to see himself as a new Romulus …. Hadrian followed suit ….
P. 196:
[Juvenal] was granted … a pension and a small but adequate farmstead near Tibur …. Hadrian was, once again, modelling himself on Augustus, who was a generous patron of poets ….
P. 202:
[Hadrian] conceived a plan to visit every province in his wide dominions. Like the first princeps, he liked to see things for himself….
P. 208:
Hadrian introduced [militarily] the highest standards of discipline and kept the soldiers on continual exercises, as if war were imminent. In order to ensure consistency, he followed the example of Augustus (once again) … by publishing a manual of military regulations.
P. 255:
[Eleusis] … at one level [Hadrian] was merely treading in the footsteps of many Roman predecessors, among them Augustus.
P. 271:
… with his tenth anniversary behind him … the emperor judged the time right to accept the title of Pater Patriae, father of his people. Like Augustus, and probably in imitation of him, he had declined the Senate’s offer for a long time ….
P. 277:
[Hadrian] was soon widely known throughout the Hellenic eastern provinces as “Hadrianos Sebastos Olumpius”, Sebastos being the Greek word for Augustus ….
P. 322:
The consecration ceremony was modeled on the obsequies of Augustus.
Part Two:
Here are some more comparisons from the same book:
P. 31:
Augustus’ constitutional arrangements were durable and, with some refinements, were still in place a hundred years later when the young Hadrian was becoming politically aware.
P. 58:
In Augustus’ day, Virgil, the poet laureate of Roman power, had sung of an imperium sine fine. A century later he still pointed the way to an empire without end and without frontiers.
P. 130:
… [Hadrian] depended on friends to advise him. Augustus adopted this model ….
P. 168:
So far as Hadrian was concerned [the Senate] offered him the high title of pater patriae …. He declined, taking Augustus’ view that this was one honor that had to be earned; he would defer acceptance until he had some real achievements to his credit.
P. 173:
So military and financial reality argued against further enlargement of the empire. … Augustus, who had been an out and out expansionist for most of his career …. … the aged Augustus produced a list of the empire’s military resources very near the end of his life. …. Hadrian may well have seen a copy of, even read, the historian’s [Tacitus’] masterpiece. P. 188:
… all the relevant tax documents were assembled and publicly burned, to make it clear that this was a decision that could not be revoked. (Hadrian may have got the idea for the incineration from Augustus, for Suetonius records that … he had “burned the records of old debts to the treasury, which were by far the most frequent source of blackmail”).
P. 198:
His aim was to create a visual connection between himself and the first princeps, between the structures that Augustus and Agrippa had left behind them and his own grand edifices …. Beginning with the burned-out Pantheon. …. Hadrian had in mind something far more ambitious than Agrippa’s temple. …. With studied modesty he intended to retain the inscribed attribution to Agrippa, and nowhere would Hadrian’s name be mentioned.
Mackey’s comment: Hmmmm ….
P. 233:
It can be no accident that the ruler [Hadrian] revered so much, Augustus, took the same line on Parthia as he did – namely, that talking is better than fighting.
P. 324:
As we have seen, until the very end of his reign, Augustus was an uncompromising and bellicose imperialist. Dio’s prescription [“Even today the methods that he then introduced are the soldiers’ law of campaigning”] fits Hadrian much more closely, and he must surely have had this example in mind when penning these words.
Part Three
“This is the chief thing: Do not be perturbed, for all things are according to
the nature of the universal;and in a little time you will be nobody and nowhere,
Rome’s first emperor, Augustus (reigned 27 BC–AD 14), had also suffered severe military setbacks, and took the decision to stop expanding the empire.
In Hadrian’s early reign Augustus was an important role model. He had a portrait of him on his signet ring and kept a small bronze bust of him among the images of the household gods in his bedroom. Like Augustus before him, Hadrian began to fix the limits of the territory that Rome could control. He withdrew his army from Mesopotamia …where a serious insurgency had broken out, and abandoned the newly conquered provinces of Armenia and Assyria, as well as other parts of the empire. ….
Hadrian was even “a new Augustus” and an “Augustus redivivus”.
Thus Anthony R. Birley (Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, p. 147):
Hadrian’s presence at Tarraco in the 150th year after the first emperor was given the name Augustus (16 January 27 BC) seems to coincide with an important policy development. The imperial coinage at about this time drastically abbreviates Hadrian’s titulature. Instead of being styled ‘Imp. Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus’, he would soon be presented simply as ‘Hadrianus Augustus’. The message thereby conveyed is plain enough: he wished to be seen as a new Augustus. Such a notion had clearly been in his mind for some time. It cannot be mere chance that caused Suetonius to write in his newly published, Life of the Deified Augustus, that the first emperor had been, ‘far removed from the desire to increase the empire of for glory in war’ — an assertion which his own account appears to contradict in a later passage. Tacitus, by contrast, out of touch – and out of sympathy – with Hadrian from the start, but aware of his aspirations to be regarded as an Augustus redivivus, seems subversively to insinuate, in the Annals, that a closer parallel could be found in Tiberius. ….
“In Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, Anthony Birley, according to a review of his book, “brings together the new … story of a man who saw himself as a second Augustus and Olympian Zeus”.
The Pantheon is one of the few monuments to survive from the Hadrianic period, despite others in the vicinity having also been restored by him (SHA, Hadrian 19). What is unusual is that rather than replacing the dedicatory inscription with one which named him, Hadrian kept (or more likely recreated) the Agrippan inscription, reminding the populace of the original dedicator. At first this gives the impression that Hadrian was being modest, as he was not promoting himself. Contrast this with the second inscription on the façade, which commemorates the restoration of the Pantheon by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in 202 CE (CIL 6. 896). However, by reminding people of the Pantheon’s Augustan origins Hadrian was subtly associating himself with the first emperor. This helped him legitimise his position as ruler by suggesting that he was part of the natural succession of (deified) emperors.
It is worth noting that Domitian had restored the Pantheon following a fire in 80 CE (Dio Cassius 66.24.2), but Hadrian chose to name the original dedicator of the temple, Agrippa, rather than linking himself with an unpopular emperor. In addition, the unique architecture of the Pantheon, with its vast dome, was a more subtle way for Hadrian to leave his signature on the building than an inscription might have been – and it would have been more easily ‘read’ by a largely illiterate population.
Thomas Pownall (Notices and Descriptions of Antiquities of the Provincia Romana of Gaul), has Hadrian, “in Vienne”, purportedly repairing Augustan architecture (pp. 38-39):
That the several Trophaeal and other public Edifices, dedicated to the honour of the Generals of the State, were repaired by Augustus himself, or by his order, preserving to each the honour of his respective record of glory, we read in Suetonius ….
And it is a fact, that the inhabitants of Vienne raised a Triumphal Arc, to grace his progress and entry into their town. The reasons why I think that this may have been afterward repaired by Hadrian are, first, that he did actually repair and restore most of the Monuments, Temples, public Edifices, and public roads, in the Province: and next that I thought, when I viewed this Arc of Orange, I could distinguish the bas-relieves and other ornaments of the central part of this edifice; I mean particularly the bas-relief of the frieze, and of the attic of the center, were of an inferior and more antiquated taste of design and execution than those of the lateral parts; and that the Corinthian columns and their capitals were not of the simple style of architecture found in the Basilica, or Curia, in Vienne, which was undoubtedly erected in the time of Augustus, but exactly like those of the Maison carrée at Nimes, which was repaired by Hadrian.
La Maison Carrée de Nîmes
Edmund Thomas will go a step further, though, and tell that the Maison carrée belonged, rather, to the time of the emperor Hadrian (Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age, p. 50):
Also worth mentioning is the so-called ‘Temple of Diana’ at Nîmes.
It was roofed with a barrel-vault of stone blocks, unusual for western architecture, and its interior walls, with engaged columns framing triangular and segmental pediments … resemble those of the ‘Temple of Bacchus’ at Baalbek …. It seems to have formed part of the substantial augusteum complex built around a substantial spring …. The date of the building is much disputed; but the resemblance to the architecture of Baalbek and the association of Antoninus Pius with Nemausus [Nîmes], may be indications of the Antonine date formerly suggested.
….
Indeed, the famous ‘Maison Carrée’ in the same city, usually regarded as an Augustan monument, has recently been redated to the same period, when the town was at its height, and may even be the ‘basilica of wonderful construction’ founded by Hadrian around 122 [sic] ‘in honour of Plotina the wife of Trajan’ ….
My first attempt at collapsing the Maccabean era into the approximate time of the Nativity of Jesus Christ – {which chronological revision needed to be done, so I had become convinced} – in an article entitled “A New Timetable for the Nativity of Jesus Christ”, fell down due to my failure then properly to weave Herod ‘the Great’ into the new tapestry.
The basic scenario (from memory), intertwining, I-II Maccabees with the Gospel Infancy narratives, had in common:
a major unifying edict (or decree), issued
for the entire kingdom, by
the current king-emperor;
a movement away to one’s ancestral home;
signs and portents in the skies; and
slaughtering of innocents.
This dual scenario now set up the likelihood that the grandiloquent emperor of Maccabees, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, be identified with the edict issuer of Luke, “Caesar Augustus” (meaning that the latter would have been a Greek, instead of a Roman).
I had jumped to the hopeful, but false, conclusion that Herod, too, was Hadrian.
Now needed is a more appropriate Maccabean model (than King Antiochus – his alter egos) for King Herod of Judea.
When we look at Maccabees in relation to Luke chapters 1-2, we find that, according to the latter, it was:
the time of Herod king of Judea (1:5); and
Caesar Augustus (2:1); when there was
(c) a governor of Syria (2:2).
In 1-2 Maccabees, we also once again have (b) an emperor, namely Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, and (c) a governor of Syria (2 Maccabees 4:4).
But do we have as well in Maccabees (a) a Herod-like governor of Judea at this time?
The purpose of this article will be to seek an answer that question.
According to what I wrote above:
“The basic scenario (from memory), intertwining, I-II Maccabees with the Gospel Infancy narratives, had in common (i) a major unifying edict (or decree), issued (ii) for the entire kingdom, by (iii) the current king-emperor; (iv) a movement away to one’s ancestral home; (v) signs and portents in the skies; and (vi) slaughtering of innocents”.
Before proceeding in this article to try to identify Herod ‘the Great’ himself in a Maccabean scenario, I need to recall for the reader basically some of my points of interconnection between these documents, as discussed in my now-discarded article, “A New Timetable for the Nativity of Jesus Christ”.
(i-iii) Edict for entire kingdom issued by current king-emperor
Luke 2:1: “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire [Roman] world”.
[Please note, the Greek phrase, pasan thn oikoumenhn, does not mention “Roman”].
I Maccabees 1:43: “Antiochus now issued a decree that all nations in his empire should abandon their own customs and become one people”.
(iv) Move back to ancestral home
Luke 2:4: “So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David”.
I Maccabees 2:1: “Mattathias, who was the son of John and the grandson of Simeon, moved from Jerusalem and settled in Modein” [the Maccabean ancestral home, cf. 9:19: “Jonathan and Simon took their brother’s body and buried it in the family tomb at Modein …”.]
(v) Signs and portents in sky
Luke 2:8-14: “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger’. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests’.”
2 Maccabees 5:1-4: “About this time Antiochus the Fourth made a second attack against Egypt. For nearly forty days people all over Jerusalem saw visions of cavalry troops in gold armor charging across the sky. The riders were armed with spears and their swords were drawn. They were lined up in battle against one another, attacking and counterattacking. Shields were clashing, there was a rain of spears, and arrows flew through the air. All the different kinds of armor and the gold bridles on the horses flashed in the sunlight. Everyone in the city prayed that these visions might be a good sign”.
(vi) Slaughter of innocents
Matthew 2:16: “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi”.
1 Maccabees 1:60-61: “Mothers who had allowed their babies to be circumcised were put to death in accordance with the king’s decree. Their babies were hung around their necks, and their families and those who had circumcised them were put to death”.
1 Maccabees 2:9: “Our children have been killed in the streets, and our young men by the sword of the enemy”.
2 Maccabees 5:11-13: “When the news of what had happened in Jerusalem reached Antiochus, he thought the whole country of Judea was in revolt, and he became as furious as a wild animal. So he left Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm, giving his men orders to cut down without mercy everyone they met and to slaughter anyone they found hiding in the houses. They murdered everyone—men and women, boys and girls; even babies were butchered”.
“Philip” of 1-2 Maccabees shapes well as Herod
Despite the (i-vi) points of commonality found between the Maccabean and Infancy (Gospel) narratives, as discussed above, there was a sore need also, so I firmly believed, to be able to match, to Luke 2:1’s important “census”, a corresponding Maccabean one.
Nothing of the like seemed to be forthcoming from 1-2 Maccabees, though, I was finding.
There does exist such a census, however. And we need to go to the Book of Acts to learn of it. According to the famous Jewish teacher (rabbi), Gamaliel (Acts 5:37): “… Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt”.
Josephus gives a fuller account, according to which (as summarised at):
To curry favor with Rome, King Herod put a golden eagle outside of the Temple of Jerusalem. Like other military standards, this eagle was carried into battle. The presence of the eagle meant the presence of the Roman Legion. By placing one at the gates, Herod was making a powerful statement regarding Jerusalem’s sovereignty under Rome.
Making idols was forbidden to the Jewish people, even if there was no attempt to worship them. Yet the Romans regarded eagle standards as holy symbols, anointing them on special days. Two respected teachers of the law, Judas and Matthias, spoke to religious scholars about this violation.
A group of these men pulled down the golden eagle and cut it into pieces. The king’s captain detained 40 participants, along with Matthias and Judas, and brought them before Herod. They explained that they made the choice to destroy the idol because they upheld the laws of Moses, and loved their religion. ….
[End of quote]
The revolutionaries Judas and Matthias, in the garbled account of Josephus, are clearly the Maccabean pairing of Judas and his father, Mattathias.
But now, thanks to Gamaliel and Josephus, we can re-date this part of the Maccabean era to the time of king Herod of Jerusalem.
And that hopeful fusion of what are supposedly two quite different historical ages now makes it imperative – and, might I say it, inevitable – that we find Herod ‘the Great’ himself situated in the Maccabean narratives, officiating during the reign of king Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
My Maccabean era alter ego for Herod
Herod ‘the Great’, revised, can only be the bloodthirsty “Phrygian” tyrant, “Philip”, whom Antiochus placed in charge of Jerusalem (2 Maccabees 5:21-22): “So Antiochus carried off eighteen hundred talents from the Temple, and hurried away to Antioch, thinking in his arrogance that he could sail on the land and walk on the sea, because his mind was elated. He left governors to oppress the people: at Jerusalem, Philip, by birth a Phrygian and in character more barbarous than the man who appointed him …”.
About half a dozen texts in 1-2 Maccabees refer to this “Philip”, whom I am now identifying with Herod ‘the Great’ – that is, in the context of my re-locating the Maccabean era to, in part, the time of the Nativity of Jesus the Messiah.
In presenting these texts here I shall be giving them, not in the sequence in which they appear, but according to what I would consider to be their proper (approximate) chronological order:
King Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ appoints Philip to Jerusalem (2 Maccabees 5:21-23):
So Antiochus carried off eighteen hundred talents from the Temple, and hurried away to Antioch, thinking in his arrogance that he could sail on the land and walk on the sea, because his mind was elated. He left governors to oppress the people: at Jerusalem, Philip, by birth a Phrygian and in character more barbarous than the man who appointed him; and at Gerizim, Andronicus; and besides these Menelaus, who lorded it over his compatriots worse than the others did.
That Philip was even “more barbarous than” king Antiochus himself already tells us a lot about this character. Also, I am interested in the fact that Philip was “a Phrygian”.
Herod ‘the Great’ has always been thought of as a “half-Jew”, an Idumean (Edomite).
Philip, now under duress from Judas Maccabeus, must call upon his northern allies for military support (2 Maccabees 8:8-10):
When Philip saw that the man [Judas] was gaining ground little by little, and that he was pushing ahead with more frequent successes, he wrote to Ptolemy, the governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, to come to the aid of the king’s government.
Then Ptolemy promptly appointed Nicanor son of Patroclus, one of the king’s chiefFriends, and sent him, in command of no fewer than twenty thousand Gentiles of all nations, to wipe out the whole race of Judea.
He associated with him Gorgias, a general and a man of experience in military service. Nicanor determined to make up for the king the tribute due to the Romans, two thousand talents, by selling the captured Jews into slavery.
We have already read in this article about a rising against Herod ‘the Great’ by a Judas.
Philip had accompanied king Antiochus on his march eastwards, to Persia. The now-dying king, on his return, makes Philip “regent” (1 Maccabees 6:14-17):
Then he called for Philip, one of his Friends, and made him ruler over all his kingdom. He gave him the crown and his robe and the signet, so that he might guide his son Antiochus and bring him up to be king. Thus King Antiochus died there in the one hundred forty-ninth year.When Lysias learned that the king was dead, he set up Antiochus the king’sson to reign. Lysiashad brought him up from boyhood; he named him Eupator.
Philip was thus elevated to virtual kingship until the son of Antiochus was old enough to rule.
Philip returns the body of the deceased king (2 Maccabees 9:28-29):
So the murderer and blasphemer, having endured the more intense suffering, such as he had inflicted on others, came to the end of his life by a most pitiable fate, among the mountains in a strange land. And Philip, one of his courtiers, took his body home; then, fearing the son of Antiochus, he withdrew to Ptolemy Philometor in Egypt.
Regarding Egypt, it is interesting that Herod ‘the Great’ had married a Cleopatra (though called “of Jerusalem”).
I am not sure if Philip’s flight to Egypt (like the Holy Family had done earlier because of Herod) occurred before, or after
his attempt to seize the kingdom for himself, which attempt Lysias was able to frustrate (I Maccabees 6:55-56, 63):
Then Lysias heard that Philip, whom King Antiochus while still living had appointed to bring up his son Antiochus to be king, had returned from Persia and Media with the forces that had gone with the king, and that he was trying to seize control of the government.
….
Then [Eupator] set off in haste and returned to Antioch. He found Philip in control of the city, but he fought against him, and took the city by force.
“What, therefore, do Caligula and Antiochus Epiphanes have in common,
as their reigns pertain to the Jews? Both reigned during a time when the Jews
were abandoning their God and breaking covenant with him on a national scale.
The one ruler officially desecrated the Temple, while the other planned to do so.
Both rulers were involved in the emperor cult that required worship
from those they ruled”.
King Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, a Seleucid, to whom ‘Caligula’ is likened here, I have already determined to have been the same as the Grecophilic emperor, Hadrian, as according to a Jewish tradition.
The recognition of this obviously requires a massive alteration to ancient chronology, and to our concept of the history of the Roman Empire.
The enigmatic ‘Caligula’, a nickname meaning “little boots”, is likely to have had a far more solid alter ego. And that, I think, can be found in the combined potentate Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’/Hadrian.
‘Caligula’ had the very name of Augustus: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus.
We definitely need to bring in Augustus here as well:
Time to consider Hadrian, that ‘mirror-image’ of Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, as also the census emperor Augustus
Each of these manifestations of whom I consider to be just the one Emperor (‘Epiphanes’/Augustus/Hadrian) had to assist him, as I have previously noted, a second-in-command, who was a virtual emperor in his own right.
This may not be so surprising in the era of the Diadochoi.
For Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, the second man was Philip the Phrygian, whom I have identified as, in a revised history:
Herod ‘the Great’, revised, can only be the bloodthirsty “Phrygian” tyrant, “Philip”, whom Antiochus placed in charge of Jerusalem (2 Maccabees 5:21-22): “So Antiochus carried off eighteen hundred talents from the Temple, and hurried away to Antioch, thinking in his arrogance that he could sail on the land and walk on the sea, because his mind was elated. He left governors to oppress the people: at Jerusalem, Philip, by birth a Phrygian and in character more barbarous than the man who appointed him …”.
For Augustus, the second man was Marcus Agrippa (who, again, was Herod).
No one played better than Marcus Agrippa (and, apparently, Herod) the rôle of a second emperor.
For Hadrian, I would focus upon the wealthy Herodes Atticus, about whom we know somewhat less.
Note that this Herodes bears the name of Herod, and of Atticus, into which family Marcus Agrippa (that is, Herod) married.
Agrippa was also a name attached to the Herods.
For ‘Caligula’, the esteemed official was, again (a supposedly by now deceased, but I think not), Marcus Agrippa:
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, often called Caligula, was the third emperor of Rome, ruling from 37 – 41 AD. [2] The Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus both condemn Caligula due to rumours of his extreme eccentricity and cruelty, giving him one of the worst reputations of all Roman emperors. Caligula was assassinated after less than four years in power after his guards plotted against him, but despite this he managed to produce many different types of coins for different purposes.
The coin pictured to the left is an example of one of Caligula’s coin types. On the obverse is a portrait of his maternal grandfather Marcus Agrippa who was a renowned military commander and a trusted friend of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. [3] The legend surrounding the portrait of Agrippa identifies him, translating to “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, three times consul”. Portraits on the obverse of coins usually wear a laurel wreath that was traditionally worn by emperors, but Agrippa did not hold this title and instead wears a rostral crown, which was awarded to commanders that won a great victory at sea. This crown can be identified by the prow of a ship that protrudes from its front, which can be seen on this coin between the L and F of the inscription. Agrippa’s greatest naval victory was in the Battle of Actium over the combined forces of Marcus Antonius (Antony) and Cleopatra. This battle eliminated Augustus’ rivals, allowing him to take complete control of Rome and create the Roman Empire. It also expanded the Roman Empire to include Egypt and its valuable resources. The coin therefore acknowledges the significant role Agrippa played in establishing and expanding the empire.
The reverse of the coin is also connected to Agrippa’s great naval victory at Actium because it depicts Neptune, the Roman god of the sea and affairs of navigation. Although the some of the details on this coin have been worn down over time, we know that Neptune holds a dolphin in his right hand and a trident in his left. These were traditional attributes of the god and symbolise his power to either grant a ship safe passage or send devastating storms. [4] Depicting Neptune and Agrippa together on this coin would have suggested that Agrippa had been granted the god’s favour, which according to Roman religion, would have been passed to his descendants, including Caligula.
Therefore, when viewed in conjunction, the two sides of this coin tell a story of Caligula’s remarkable ancestry. The portrait of Agrippa celebrating his success at sea, paired with the figure of Neptune and his traditional attributes of power, indicate that Caligula was descended from a naval hero whose victories were so significant that they enabled the establishment of the Roman Empire. Caligula wanted this coin to closely link him to Agrippa’s god-like success. Even without the coin mentioning Caligula by name, the people of Rome would have been familiar with his ancestry and would have recognised this as an attempt to link himself with the past success of his grandfather.
Another reason that Caligula produced coins depicting Agrippa was that it connected him to Augustus because, as mentioned above, Agrippa was one of Augustus’ closest friends.
After the battle of Actium, Augustus had produced a similar coin type that depicted his portrait beside Agrippa’s on the obverse and a crocodile chained to a palm tree, symbolising Rome’s conquest of Egypt. Caligula may have been imitating this style of coin to associate himself with Augustus who perfectly embodied what Rome expected of its emperors.
It is also possible that promoting a connection to Agrippa on coins would have been intended to advertise that Caligula may have been planning to invade Britain (Cassius Dio, 59.21), which would have involved crossing the English Channel, a naval campaign that was last attempted by Julius Caesar in 54 BC. By linking himself to Agrippa’s naval success, Caligula may have sought to inspire confidence in this endeavour.
This coin was one of the most common coin types produced during Caligula’s reign because of its important message that Caligula was descended from a famous commander. Many of the coins Caligula produced promoted members of his family, such as his mother Agrippina, father Germanicus or three sisters. His Agrippa coin type fits well into this series, giving Caligula’s coinage an overarching message of familial success that would have firmly established his legitimacy as emperor. Like the emperors before him, Caligula believed that his lineage was what justified his power and he therefore promoted this message on his coinage.
Caligula’s decision to use the portrait of his grandfather Agrippa on his coinage therefore served many purposes. It showed that he was the descendant of a successful military commander, legitimised his right to inherit Imperial power and connected him to Augustus, something that all Roman emperors strived to do. Reminding the public of Agrippa’s success, popularity and proximity to other powerful historical figures would have strengthened the perception of Caligula as a good emperor who could live up to the achievements of his ancestors. Despite this, he is primarily remembered for the unpleasant rumours preserved by ancient historians and his brutal assassination that resulted from his ultimate failure to live up to those he aspired to.
[1] Online Coins of the Roman Empire – RIC I (second edition) Gaius/Caligula 58
[2] Encyclopedia Britannica – Caligula
[3] Encyclopedia Britannica – Marcus Vispanius Agrippa
[4] Dictionary of Roman Coins, Republican and Imperial, 570
“… the procurators could manage nothing against [Herod’s] advice”.
Richard Carrier
Extending Herod ‘the Great’
Undoubtedly, Herod is in need of a major alter ego, or more, given that one bearing his impressive epithet, ‘the Great’, appears to have left no significant depiction of himself, qua Herod, prompting my surprised article:
and with the Phrygian ‘Philip’ of Maccabees 1-2 now identified there as King Herod himself, it needs to be shown that Herod had been exalted – just like this Philip in the case of king Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ – by the emperor Caesar Augustus above all the others.
For Philip, who had been initially appointed over Jerusalem (2 Maccabees 5:22), was ultimately given the following outstanding further promotion (1 Maccabees 6:14-16):
Then [king Antiochus] called for Philip, one of his Friends, and made him ruler over all his kingdom. He gave him the crown and his robe and the signet, so that he might guide his son Antiochus and bring him up to be king. Thus King Antiochus died there in the one hundred forty-ninth year.
Philip was now virtually a second emperor.
This was a situation somewhat like that of the evil Haman in the Book of Esther, raised above his fellows by King Ahasuerus, and even given the king’s signet ring (Esther 3:10).
It may be possible to show that Herod ‘the Great’ was thus (as Philip) exalted.
Richard Carrier has written an article, entitled “Herod the Procurator: Was Herod the Great a Roman Governor of Syria?”
At the beginning of the article we learn this intriguing detail (I do not accept the dates):
In 20 B.C. Augustus toured the East, settling various affairs, finally landing in Syria, where he acquitted Herod of charges against him brought by the Gadarenes, and attached the territories of the recently-deceased tetrarch Zenodorus to Herod’s own growing kingdom. Then Josephus reports something quite astonishing: Augustus “mixed him in with those who were procurating Syria, ordering them to do everything in accordance with his judgement,” or indeed, “he appointed him procurator of all Syria, so the procurators could manage nothing against his advice.”
“… the procurators could manage nothing against [Herod’s] advice”.
And, just as king Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ had highly appointed Philip at the end of the king’s campaign to the East, so here we read that Augustus himself had just “toured the East” when he gave Herod ‘the Great’ such over-arching power.
Now Philip, now Herod, thus made leading man in the kingdom, the king’s right-hand man.
There may be an extension to all of this:
B: Marcus Agrippa to be added to the mix?
What we have just read about Herod – but particularly what we have read about him in his guise as Philip – can now be extended to include Augustus’s right-hand man, his virtual ‘second self’, Marcus Agrippa. Perplexed historians wonder why this powerful man did not seize the kingdom for himself. For example:
When Gaius Octavius became the first emperor of Rome, Marcus Agrippa was by his side. As the emperor’s loyal deputy, he waged wars, pacified provinces, beautified Rome, and played a crucial role in establishing the Pax Romana—but he always served knowing that he would never rule in his own name. Why he did so, and never grasped power for himself, has perplexed historians for centuries. ….
Well, actually the king’s second-in-command did seize power – if but for a brief period of time, in his guise as Philip (I Maccabees 6:55-56, 63):
Then Lysias heard that Philip, whom King Antiochus while still living had appointed to bring up his son Antiochus to be king, had returned from Persia and Media with the forces that had gone with the king, and that he was trying to seize control of the government.
….
Then [Antiochus Eupator] set off in haste and returned to Antioch. He found Philip in control of the city, but he fought against him, and took the city by force.
In the next piece: https://prabook.com/web/marcus.agrippa/3739878 we learn two intriguing things: the census (cf. Luke 2:1-2) was the dual work of the emperor Augustus and Marcus Agrippa; and, the latter was given the signet ring when the emperor was ill, “to be designated the emperor’s successor” (I do not accept the dates):
Agrippa and Octavian jointly conducted a census and carried out a purge of the Senate; in 28 and 27 Agrippa held the consulate again, both times with Octavian (from 27, Augustus) as his colleague. In 23, a year of constitutional crisis, Augustus fell ill and presented his signet ring to Agrippa, who seemed thus to be designated the emperor’s successor. ….
Philip likewise, as we read, had been given the signet ring when the emperor was ill (and dying). But, whereas in the Maccabean version, the emperor will actually die and his second-in-command will continue on; in the pseudo-historical version, the emperor will rally, and will live to bury his second-in-command, Marcus Agrippa.
King Herod ‘the Great’ was, like his supposed friend (see below) Marcus Agrippa, a monumental builder, including in Palestine. In the following article we read this about some of the major building works of “Herod the Great”:
And there were other cities where [Herod] ordered new buildings to be placed: Jericho and Samaria are examples. New fortresses served the security of both the Jews and their king: Herodion, Machaerus, and Masada are among them.
But Herod’s crowning achievement was a splendid new port, called Caesarea in honor of the emperor (the harbor was called Sebastos, the Greek translation of “Augustus”). This magnificent and opulent city, which was dedicated in 9 BCE, was built to rival Alexandria in the land trade to Arabia, from where spices, perfume and incense were imported. It was not an oriental town like Jerusalem; it was laid out on a Greek grid plan, with a market, an aqueduct, government offices, baths, villas, a circus, and pagan temples. (The most important of these was the temple where the emperor was worshipped; it commanded the port.) The port was a masterpiece of engineering: its piers were made from hydraulic concrete (which hardens underwater) and protected by unique wave-breaking structures. ….
[End of quote]
It is thought that Marcus Agrippa was heavily involved in some of Herod’s major constructions. Thus we read in Israel Gregory F. Votruba’s article, “Imported Building Materials of Sebastos Harbour, Israel” (pp. 327-328):
…. The massive scale of the harbour, pozzolana importation, and marine concrete architecture with its closest parallels in Italy, have led researchers to suspect that the connection with Italy is more than simply one of pozzolana supply, and that Herod would have needed both political and logistical backing from the ruling power in Rome (Hohlfelder, 2000: 251). The construction of Sebastos Harbour would have been very much in Rome’s interest. Rome would have appreciated the naval infrastructure to preserve its eastern Mediterranean hegemony (Beebe, 1983: 202; Roller, 1998: 69; Hohlfelder, 2000: 243). Others have claimed that Sebastos offered a valuable berth for the Rome-Alexandria grain fleets, securing Rome’s lifeline (Beebe, 1983: 205; Oleson and Branton, 1992: 51; Raban, in press). Rome would certainly also have been interested in the salt, bitumen and exotic eastern goods which could have been exported from Judea. Most profoundly, as Gianfrotta writes, ‘Caesarea was part of the trend toward increasing trade, which was of critical importance for Rome and for the political world system of the new Augustan order’ (1996: 74–5).
Rome is therefore assumed to have found value in the construction of Sebastos, and in particular Augustus’ military commander and confidant Marcus Agrippa is credited as being an active protagonist (Hohlfelder, 2000). Having worked on and commissioned naval building in the Bay of Naples, Agrippa would certainly have been aware of the properties of its volcanic ash for hydraulic concrete, properties known in Italy since at least the mid-1st century (Hohlfelder, 2000: 250; Oleson et al., 2004: 202).
It has therefore been proposed that at a meeting between Herod and Agrippa in Mytilene in 23 BC (AJ 15.349), Herod’s conjectural mention of his Sebastos Harbour ambition, combined with Agrippa’s recognition of the importance of the sea and knowledge of harbour engineering, catalyzed the construction of Sebastos which was begun the following year (Hohlfelder, 2000: 250) (Fig. 2).
Agrippa’s role may have been a leading one in organizing the shipment of pozzolana, and even dispatching Italian manpower experienced in construction with marine concrete to Judea (Hohlfelder, 2000: 252). Considering that the practice of building with concrete in the open sea had been previously experimented with only in Italy, Italian builders are assumed to have been active in the construction of Sebastos (Hohlfelder, 1996: 78–9). It would not have been the only project of Herod’s to use Italian expertise. At Herod’s Palace in Jericho there are characteristically Roman opus reticulatum and opus incertum, floral and geometric pattern frescos, and indiscriminate use of the Ionic and Corinthian orders which are attributed to Italian builders also proposed to have been sent by Agrippa (Roller, 1998: 173). Uniquely Roman architecture and decorative aspects are also known from Masada and Herodion (Roller, 1998: 166, 188–9). ….
[End of quote]
Two points to be seriously considered here.
Was this really typical Italian building style, or was it of Greek origin – “Ionic”, “Corinthian”?
And, was Marcus Agrippa assisting Herod, or, was Herod the same person as Marcus Agrippa?
Intriguing in relation to all of this is Robert L. Hohlfelder’s provocative title to his article: “Beyond Coincidence? Marcus Agrippa and King Herod’s Harbor” (JNES, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 241-253).
Now we turn to the emperor Hadrian, whom I have identified as a further extension, alter ego, of Antiochus-Augustus. Hadrian, too, then, should have a Philip-Herod (Agrippa) type friend.
C: Herod Atticus
Did the Grecophile emperor, Hadrian – whom I have taken right out of his chronological comfort zone, and identified as Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ (hence as “Caesar Augustus”), hence, now, as a Greek ruler – did he, likewise, have his Herod-type of friend and right-hand man?
He ought to have had, if my reconstruction of this era, revised, is on the right track.
Hadrian, who left a massive impression upon antiquity, is, strangely, poorly sourced. Anthony Everitt writes of this in his book, Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (Random House, 2009): “The most serious problem has been the ancient literary sources of which a mere handful survive, mangled and mutilated”.
The best that we can expect, therefore, is a garbled version of whoever Hadrian really was.
Hadrian is in need of an alter ego, and I have given him two outstanding ones (for starters): namely, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Caesar Augustus, of whom (the latter) Hadrian was thought to have been “a reincarnation”.
Hadrian’s coins featured the inscription Adrianos Sebastos, the latter word being Greek for “Augustus”.
With a garbled Hadrian we would likely get, as well, a garbled and semi-fictitious partner, Herod, if we can find one for him.
Well, Hadrian’s Herod does indeed exist in alleged history, and his name is, surprisingly, Herod (or Herodes) Atticus.
Now this gains extra meaning when we learn that Marcus Agrippa, our Herod and right-hand man for the emperor Augustus (see above), had married an “Atticus”.
…. Herodes was born into an immensely wealthy Athenian family that had received Roman citizenship during the reign of the emperor Claudius (41–54). He was befriended by Hadrian (emperor 117–138), who employed him as a commissioner in charge of eliminating corruption in the free cities of the province of Asia. Herodes became consul in 143 and later contributed to the education of Hadrian’s destined successors, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
We recall that Philip was entrusted by Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ with the instruction of the king’s son.
Under his direction numerous buildings were constructed throughout Greece, including an odeum (called the Odeum of Herodes Atticus) at Athens.
Of his voluminous output of speeches and other writings, nothing unquestionably authentic survives ….
Haven’t we read that sort of thing before!’
Herod Atticus much resembles our composite Herod ‘the Great’ (= Philip/Marcus Agrippa) in his Greek-ness; he was filthy rich; had Greco-Roman connections; his friendship with the emperor; his activities in Asia; his buildings on a massive scale.
But, above all, Herodes Atticus “served as a governor of Judaea”:
showing that the land of Chaldea was not actually in Mesopotamia, at all, but was in NW Syria, I can no longer accept my original view based on convention.
The same goes now, too, for Babylon, that needs to undergo a tectonic geographical shift corresponding to Royce Erickson’s movement of Chaldea. On this, see my article:
He even apparently bore the name of “Nebuchednezzar”:
“The Chronicle of John of Nikiu who wrote of Cambyses[’] exploits after his name change to Nebuchadnezzar. He wrote of how Cambyses under his new name Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and desolated Egypt. It becomes apparent therefore that John gave credit to Cambyses for what Nebuchadnezzar accomplished”.
So basically what I am getting at here is that the above presumed century and a half of history (c. 670 BC and c. 525 BC) may need to be collapsed, like a star into a presumed black hole, into just the one point in time.
Three major invasion eras of Egypt becoming reduced to just the one.
Meeting and identifying Udjahorresne
If this Ushanahuru were Udjahorresne, then it would provide a
chronological connecting link between c. 670 BC and c. 525 BC.
Cambyses’ (Darius’) assistant or mentor (tour guide) in Egypt was one Udjahorresne (or Udjahorresnet, Wedjaḥorresnet, and many other variants).
We read about this important official as “Wedjahor-Resne” in the following account:
The … Egyptian inscription was written over a naophoros-statue, i.e., a statue representing a man carrying (“phoros“) a small shrine (“naos“) with an image of a god. In this case, the god can be identified with Osiris, the ruler of the Underworld. The text commemorates all pious acts of the carrier, an important courtier named Wedjahor-Resne or Udjahor-Resnet. The statue, which is about 70 centimeters high, was brought to Italy by the Roman emperor Hadrian (r. 117-138), who kept it in his villa in Tivoli. Currently, it is displayed in the Egyptian department of the Vatican Museums.
Wedjahor-Resne was not only the pharaoh‘s personal physician, but was also responsible for the royal navy. In 526 BCE, king Amasis died and was succeeded by his son Psammetichus III. During the transitional period, the Persian king Cambyses attacked Egypt and defeated his unprepared enemies near the Pelusian branch of the Nile. The standard account is written by Herodotus.
It is probable that Wedjahor-Resne defected to the Persians at some stage before or during this war, because nothing is known about naval operations, although the Egyptians owned a large navy and had occupied Cyprus.note[Herodotus, Histories 2.182.] The Greek historian Ctesias of Cnidus, who is not known for his reliability but may for once have had access to reliable information, explicitly mentions a traitor, although his name is Combaphis.note[Ctesias, Persica10.] It should be noted that an ally of Egypt, the Greek leader Polycrates of Samos, allowed himself to be bribed away.
Cartouche of Cambyses (“Mesuti-Ra Cambyses”)
When Cambyses had taken the Egyptian capital Memphis, he was recognized as the new king. Wedjahor-Resne was reinstated in almost all his former functions and helped Cambyses to behave like a true Egyptian king. For example, he persuaded Cambyses to direct the Persian garrison in the holy city of Sais to another camp, making sure that the ancient sanctuary of Neith, the mother of the supreme god Ra, and the shrine of Osiris were purified. Wedjahor-Resne also composed Cambyses’ new royal name, Mesuti-Ra (“born of Ra”).
…
Cambyses left Egypt in the spring of 522, taking Wedjahor-Resne with him as his physician. Unfortunately, the king had an accident on his way back, and his doctor was unable to cure him.
After Cambyses’ death and a violent civil war (described in the Behistun Inscription), Darius became king. The new ruler allowed Wedjahor-Resne to return home and ordered him to supervise the medical schools – the “houses of life” in the text – that had been destroyed (by Cambyses?). Since the text does not mention Darius’ visit to Egypt in 519/518, it is likely that the naophoros-statue was made soon after Wedjahor-Resne’s return.
His tomb has been discovered in 1995 at Abusir. Except for two damaged sarcophagi, little was found in the burial chamber. It is interesting to note that in c.340 BCE, Wedjahor-Resne seems to have been venerated as a more or less holy person in Memphis.
[End of quote]
What I am interested in within my new historical context is this:
Does our Udjahorresne emerge elsewhere, in an era other than
the supposed Persian era, in, say, the neo-Assyrian period?
I think that he Udjahorresne may well thus emerge.
My suggestion is that Udjahorresne was the same person as Tirhakah’s (Taharqa’s) son and heir, Ushanahuru, as referred to by Esarhaddon (N. Grimal’s A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, 1994, p. 350):
I laid siege to Memphis, [Taharqa’s] royal residence and conquered it in half a day by means of mines, breaches and assault ladders. His queen, the women of his palace, Ushanahuru his ‘heir apparent’, his other children, his possessions, horses, large and small cattle beyond counting I carried away as booty to Assyria ….
[Pritchard 1955: 293].
If this Ushanahuru were Udjahorresne, then it would provide a chronological connecting link between c. 670 BC and c. 525 BC.
And I think that we find the very same elements in the two names, Ushanahuru and Udjahorresne, the latter of which the Assyrians may well have found rather difficult to transliterate:
Udja – horre[s] – ne
Usha – huru – na
It would make perfect sense that Esarhaddon (= Ashurbanipal = Nebuchednezzar), as Cambyses (named “Nebuchednezzar”), might later have used a man of such culture, education and high-standing as his Egyptian prisoner Ushanahuru, to take back home with him.
The Udjahorresne Inscription
Offering by the king to [the god] Osiris-Hemag: thousands of bread and beer, beef and birds and all other things good and pure, for the ka of a man honored with the gods of the province of Sais, the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne.
Offering by the king to Osiris, who lives in Khet-Bjet: a funeral offering of bread and beer, beef and birds, alabaster vases and garments, incense and perfumes and all other good things, for the ka of a man honored by the gods of the province of Sais, the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne.
Oh Osiris, Lord of Eternity! The chief physician
Wedjahor-Resne keeps you in his arms to
protect you. May your ka order that people do all kinds of useful things to him
because he stands guard behind your eternal shrine.
This man honored with the great [goddess] Neit, the mother of the god [Re], and with the gods of Sais, the prince, the royal chancellor, the unique companion,
the one truly known and loved by the king, the scribe, the inspector of the scribes of the dedet-court, the first among the great scribes of the prison, the director of the palace,
the admiral of the royal navy of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt Khnemibre [Amasis], the admiral of the royal navy of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt,
Ankhkaenre [Psammetichus III], Wedjahor-Resne, son of the director of the castles, khrjep-priest, renep-priest, khepetwedet-priest, prophet of Neit, who is the head of the province of Sais Peftuôneit,
says: ‘The great king of all foreign countries Cambyses came to Egypt, taking the foreigners of every foreign country with him. When he had taken possession of the entire country,
they settled themselves down therein, and he was made great sovereign of Egypt and great king of all foreign countries. His Majesty appointed me his chief physician
and caused me to stay with him in my quality of companion and director of the palace, and ordered me to compose his titulary, his name as king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mesuti-Ra [born of Ra]. And I made sure that His Majesty knew of the greatness of Sais,
which is the seat of the great Neit, the mother who brought forth Re, and who unveiled birth when birth did not exist. [And I made sure that His Majesty knew] the significance of the temple of Neit, which is the sky in all its dispositions, and knew the greatness of the castles of the Red Crown
and all the gods and goddesses who live there, and knew significance of the greatness of Khet-Bjet, which is the dwelling of the sovereign, the lord of heaven [Osiris], and knew the greatness of the Resenet and the Mekhnet, of the dwelling of Re and the dwelling of Atum, which are the mysteries of all gods.’
The man honored with his town’s god [Osiris] and all other gods, the prince, the royal chancellor, the unique companion, the one truly known and loved by the king,
the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne, son of Atemirtis, says: ‘I made a petition
to His Majesty the king of Upper and Lower Egypt Cambyses concerning the many foreigners billeted on the temple of Neit
that they should be driven thence, so that the temple of Neit was restored to its former greatness. And His Majesty ordered that all the foreigners
who were living in the premises of Neit should be driven out, that all their houses and all their garbage should be thrown out of the temple, and that
all their baggage should be carried away from its premises, His Majesty ordered the purification of the temple of Neit and its restoration to the people
[lacuna] and the schedule of the priests. His Majesty ordered to restitute the revenues of the wakf-estate to the great Neit, the mother of the god, and to the gods of Sais. His Majesty ordered
to conduct all their festivities and all their processions as they had always been. His Majesty ordered these things because I had informed him about the greatness of Sais, which is the town where all gods have placed their eternal thrones.’
The man honored with the gods of Sais,
the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne, says: ‘The king of Upper and Lower Egypt Cambyses came to Sais. His Majesty came to the temple of Neit in person. Like all kings before, he prostrated himself before Her Majesty [Neit]. Like all good kings, he made a large sacrifice
of all good things to the great Neit, mother of the god, and to all great gods of Sais. His Majesty did this because I had informed His Majesty about the greatness of Her Majesty,
who is the mother of Re himself.’
The man honored with Osiris-Hemag,
the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne, says: ‘His Majesty did all useful things in the temple of Neit. Like all kings before him, he established libations to the lord of eternity in the interior of the temple of Neit.
His Majesty did this because I had informed His Majesty about all useful things which had been done in the temple by all kings because of the greatness of this temple, which is the eternal dwelling of all gods.’
The man honored with the gods of the province Sais, the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne, says: ‘I restored the revenues of the wakf-estate of the great Neit, the mother of the god,
for eternity, as per His Majesty’s orders. I established [new and] pious funds for Neit, the mistress of Sais, like a servant
excelling his master does. I am the benefactor of my city: I have saved its inhabitants from the very large troubles
which had come over the whole country and which had not yet existed before in this country. I defended the meek
against the powerful; I saved those who were afraid after an accident had happened to them; I gave them all useful things
when they were unable to take care of themselves.’
The man honored with his town’s god, the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne, says: ‘I am honored by my father, praised by my mother,
trusted by my brothers. As per His Majesty’s orders, I established them in the function of prophet and gave them a fief
for eternity. I made a fine tomb for those who had no tomb. I nourished all their children. I made their houses strong. I did
all useful things for them, like a father does for his children, when trouble came over
this province, when very large troubles came
over the country as a whole.’
The prince, the royal chancellor, the unique companion, the prophet of the one who lives with them, the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne, son of Atemirtis, says: ‘His Majesty the king of Upper and Lower Egypt Darius (may he live forever!) sent me back to Egypt, while His Majesty was in Elam, having become great king of all foreign countries and great sovereign of Egypt, ordering me to restore the Houses of Life
and the [lacuna] after they had been ruined. The foreigners carried me from country to country until we reached Egypt, as per orders of the lord of both countries [Upper and Lower Egypt]. I did what His Majesty had ordered. I provided the [Houses of Life] with students, all sons of fine people; there were no sons of common men. I placed them under the direction of all teachers
[lacuna] all their works. His Majesty ordered to provide them with all necessary means to ensure that they could do their work. [Consequently], I gave them all they needed and all the scribes’ accessories, as it had always been.
His Majesty did this, because he knew how useful this art can be to survive illness and to ensure that the names of the gods, their temples, the revenues of their wakf-estates and their rituals are remembered for eternity.’
The chief physician Wedjahor-Resne, says: ‘I was honored by all my masters for all my life. They gave me golden ornaments and all kinds of useful things.’
The man who was honored with Neit, says: ‘Oh great gods of Sais,
remember all merituous actions done by the chief physician Wedjahor-Resne. Ensure that all kinds of useful things are done for him and ensure that his good reputation will remain unshattered in this country for ever.’
Psammetichus and other links
Psammetichus coincidences
We are told that:
Ashurbanipal invaded Egypt at the time of Psammetichus I (c. 664 BC);
Nebuchednezzar invaded Egypt at the time of Psammetichus II (c. 595-589 BC);
Cambyses invaded Egypt at the time of Psammetichus III (c. 526-525 BC).
Greek coincidences
Each of the above phases was said to be a time when Egypt was ‘opening itself up to the world’, including the Greeks.
Thus we read in N. Grimal’s A History of Ancient Egypt:
P. 355: “Egypt opened up increasingly to the outside world during the fifty-four years of Psammetichus [I]’s reign. Foreign merchants arrived on the heels of foreign soldiers, and diplomatic relations between Egypt and Greece evolved …”.
P. 360: “Necho II [presumed father of Psammetichus II] pursued a policy of opening Egypt up to the Greek world …”.
P. 262: “Psammetichus [II] … had troops – including numerous Carians …”.
P. 363: “[Psammetichus III] … there was a peculiar mixture of Egyptian, Greek, Jewish and Oriental themes”.
Divine Adoratrice
P. 361: “Psammetichus I had Nitocris adopted by the Divine Adoratrices of the time, Shepenwepet II and Amenirdis II”.
P. 361: “Psammetichus [II] made sure that Ankhnesneferibre … was adopted by the Divine Adoratrice Nitocris”.
P. 365: “Saites and Kushites were moreover agreed on the maintenance of the office of Divine Adoratrice at Thebes”.
“Then Josephus reports something quite astonishing: Augustus “mixed [Herod] in with those who were procurating Syria, ordering them to do everything
in accordance with his judgement,” or indeed, “he appointed him procurator
of all Syria, so the procurators could manage nothing against his advice”.”
Richard Carrier
Since I identified Herod ‘the Great’ with Marcus Agrippa in various articles – Agrippa being a name common to the Herod family – I learned what I did not know, today (Australia Day, 26th January 2024), that the name Marcus was held by a Herod Agrippa. So it all comes full circle.
and with the Phrygian ‘Philip’ of Maccabees 1-2 now identified there as King Herod himself, it needs to be shown that Herod had been – just like this Philip in the case of king Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ – exalted by the emperor Caesar Augustus above all the others. For Philip, who had been initially appointed over Jerusalem (2 Maccabees 5:22), was ultimately given the following outstanding further promotion (1 Maccabees 6:14-16):
Then [king Antiochus] called for Philip, one of his Friends, and made him ruler over all his kingdom. He gave him the crown and his robe and the signet, so that he might guide his son Antiochus and bring him up to be king. Thus King Antiochus died there in the one hundred forty-ninth year.
Philip was now virtually a second emperor.
This was a situation somewhat like that of the evil Haman in the Book of Esther, raised above his fellows by King Ahasuerus, and even given the king’s signet ring (Esther 3:10).
It may be possible to show that Herod ‘the Great’ was thus (as Philip) exalted.
Richard Carrier has written an article, entitled “Herod the Procurator: Was Herod the Great a Roman Governor of Syria?”
At the beginning of the article we learn this intriguing detail (I do not accept the date):
In 20 B.C. Augustus toured the East, settling various affairs, finally landing in Syria, where he acquitted Herod of charges against him brought by the Gadarenes, and attached the territories of the recently-deceased tetrarch Zenodorus to Herod’s own growing kingdom. Then Josephus reports something quite astonishing: Augustus “mixed him in with those who were procurating Syria, ordering them to do everything in accordance with his judgement,” or indeed, “he appointed him procurator of all Syria, so the procurators could manage nothing against his advice.”
“… the procurators could manage nothing against [Herod’s] advice”.
And, just as king Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ had highly appointed Philip at the end of the king’s campaign to the East, so here we read that Augustus himself had just “toured the East” when he gave Herod ‘the Great’ such over-arching power.
Now Philip, now Herod, made leading man in the kingdom, the king’s right-hand man.
There may be an extension to all of this:
B: Marcus Agrippa to be added to the mix?
What we have just read about Herod – but particularly what we have read about him in his guise as Philip – can now be extended to include Augustus’s right-hand man, his virtual ‘second self’, Marcus Agrippa. Perplexed historians wonder why this powerful man did not seize the kingdom for himself. For example:
When Gaius Octavius became the first emperor of Rome, Marcus Agrippa was by his side. As the emperor’s loyal deputy, he waged wars, pacified provinces, beautified Rome, and played a crucial role in establishing the Pax Romana—but he always served knowing that he would never rule in his own name.
Why he did so, and never grasped power for himself, has perplexed historians for centuries. ….
Well, actually the king’s second-in-command did seize power – if but for a brief period of time, in his guise as Philip (I Maccabees 6:55-56, 63):
Then Lysias heard that Philip, whom King Antiochus while still living had appointed to bring up his son Antiochus to be king, had returned from Persia and Media with the forces that had gone with the king, and that he was trying to seize control of the government.
….
Then [Antiochus Eupator] set off in haste and returned to Antioch. He found Philip in control of the city, but he fought against him, and took the city by force.
In the next piece: https://prabook.com/web/marcus.agrippa/3739878 we learn two intriguing things: the census (cf. Luke 2:1-2) was the dual work of the emperor Augustus and Marcus Agrippa; and, the latter was given the signet ring when the emperor was ill, “to be designated the emperor’s successor” (I do not accept the dates):
Agrippa and Octavian jointly conducted a census and carried out a purge of the Senate; in 28 and 27 Agrippa held the consulate again, both times with Octavian (from 27, Augustus) as his colleague. In 23, a year of constitutional crisis, Augustus fell ill and presented his signet ring to Agrippa, who seemed thus to be designated the emperor’s successor. ….
Philip likewise, as we read, had been given the signet ring when the emperor was ill (and dying). But, whereas in the Maccabean version, the emperor will actually die and his second-in-command will continue on; in the pseudo-historical version, the emperor will rally, and will live to bury his second-in-command, Marcus Agrippa.
King Herod ‘the Great’ was, like his supposed friend (see below) Marcus Agrippa, a monumental builder, including in Palestine.
And there were other cities where [Herod] ordered new buildings to be placed: Jericho and Samaria are examples. New fortresses served the security of both the Jews and their king: Herodion, Machaerus, and Masada are among them.
But Herod’s crowning achievement was a splendid new port, called Caesarea in honor of the emperor (the harbor was called Sebastos, the Greek translation of “Augustus”). This magnificent and opulent city, which was dedicated in 9 BCE, was built to rival Alexandria in the land trade to Arabia, from where spices, perfume and incense were imported. It was not an oriental town like Jerusalem; it was laid out on a Greek grid plan, with a market, an aqueduct, government offices, baths, villas, a circus, and pagan temples. (The most important of these was the temple where the emperor was worshipped; it commanded the port.) The port was a masterpiece of engineering: its piers were made from hydraulic concrete (which hardens underwater) and protected by unique wave-breaking structures. ….
[End of quote]
It is thought that Marcus Agrippa was heavily involved in some of Herod’s major constructions. Thus we read in Israel Gregory F. Votruba’s article, “Imported Building Materials of Sebastos Harbour, Israel” (pp. 327-328):
…. The massive scale of the harbour, pozzolana importation, and marine concrete architecture with its closest parallels in Italy, have led researchers to suspect that the connection with Italy is more than simply one of pozzolana supply, and that Herod would have needed both political and logistical backing from the ruling power in Rome (Hohlfelder, 2000: 251). The construction of Sebastos Harbour would have been very much in Rome’s interest. Rome would have appreciated the naval infrastructure to preserve its eastern Mediterranean hegemony (Beebe, 1983: 202; Roller, 1998: 69; Hohlfelder, 2000: 243). Others have claimed that Sebastos offered a valuable berth for the Rome-Alexandria grain fleets, securing Rome’s lifeline (Beebe, 1983: 205; Oleson and Branton, 1992: 51; Raban, in press). Rome would certainly also have been interested in the salt, bitumen and exotic eastern goods which could have been exported from Judea. Most profoundly, as Gianfrotta writes, ‘Caesarea was part of the trend toward increasing trade, which was of critical importance for Rome and for the political world system of the new Augustan order’ (1996: 74–5).
Rome is therefore assumed to have found value in the construction of Sebastos, and in particular Augustus’ military commander and confidant Marcus Agrippa is credited as being an active protagonist (Hohlfelder, 2000). Having worked on and commissioned naval building in the Bay of Naples, Agrippa would certainly have been aware of the properties of its volcanic ash for hydraulic concrete, properties known in Italy since at least the mid-1st century (Hohlfelder, 2000: 250; Oleson et al., 2004: 202). It has therefore been proposed that at a meeting between Herod and Agrippa in Mytilene in 23 BC (AJ 15.349), Herod’s conjectural mention of his Sebastos Harbour ambition, combined with Agrippa’s recognition of the importance of the sea and knowledge of harbour engineering, catalyzed the construction of Sebastos which was begun the following year (Hohlfelder, 2000: 250) (Fig. 2).
Agrippa’s role may have been a leading one in organizing the shipment of pozzolana, and even dispatching Italian manpower experienced in construction with marine concrete to Judea (Hohlfelder, 2000: 252). Considering that the practice of building with concrete in the open sea had been previously experimented with only in Italy, Italian builders are assumed to have been active in the construction of Sebastos (Hohlfelder, 1996: 78–9). It would not have been the only project of Herod’s to use Italian expertise. At Herod’s Palace in Jericho there are characteristically Roman opus reticulatum and opus incertum, floral and geometric pattern frescos, and indiscriminate use of the Ionic and Corinthian orders which are attributed to Italian builders also proposed to have been sent by Agrippa (Roller, 1998: 173). Uniquely Roman architecture and decorative aspects are also known from Masada and Herodion (Roller, 1998: 166, 188–9). ….
[End of quote]
Two points to be seriously considered here.
Was this really typical Italian building style, or was it of Greek origin – “Ionic”, “Corinthian”?
And, was Marcus Agrippa architecturally assisting Herod, or, was Herod the same person as Marcus Agrippa?
Intriguing in relation to all of this is Robert L. Hohlfelder’s provocative title to his article: “Beyond Coincidence? Marcus Agrippa and King Herod’s Harbor” (JNES, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 241-253).
Now we turn to the emperor Hadrian, whom I have identified as a further extension, alter ego, of Antiochus-Augustus.
Hadrian, too, then, should have a Philip-Herod (Agrippa) type friend.
And I think that he does.
C: Herodes Atticus
Did the Grecophile emperor, Hadrian – whom I have taken right out of his chronological comfort zone, and identified as Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ (hence as “Caesar Augustus”), hence, now, as a Greek ruler – did he, likewise, have his Herod-type of friend and right-hand man?
He ought to have had, if my reconstruction of this era, revised, is on the right track.
Hadrian, who left a massive impression upon antiquity, is, strangely, poorly sourced.
Anthony Everitt writes of this in his book, Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (Random House, 2009): “The most serious problem has been the ancient literary sources of which a mere handful survive, mangled and mutilated”.
The best that we can expect, therefore, is a garbled version of whoever Hadrian really was.
Hadrian is in need of an alter ego, and I have given him two outstanding ones (for starters): namely, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Caesar Augustus, of whom (the latter) Hadrian was thought to have been “a reincarnation”.
Hadrian’s coins featured the inscription Adrianos Sebastos, the latter word being Greek for “Augustus”.
With a garbled Hadrian we would likely get, as well, a garbled and semi-fictitious partner, Herod, if we can find one for him. Well, Hadrian’s Herod does indeed exist in alleged history, and his name is, surprisingly, Herod (or Herodes) Atticus.
Now this gains extra meaning when we learn that Marcus Agrippa, our Herod and right-hand man for the emperor Augustus (see B.), had married an “Atticus”.
…. Herodes was born into an immensely wealthy Athenian family that had received Roman citizenship during the reign of the emperor Claudius (41–54). He was befriended by Hadrian (emperor 117–138), who employed him as a commissioner in charge of eliminating corruption in the free cities of the province of Asia. Herodes became consul in 143 and later contributed to the education of Hadrian’s destined successors, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. …
We recall that Philip was entrusted by Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ with the instruction of the king’s son.
Under his direction numerous buildings were constructed throughout Greece, including an odeum (called the Odeum of Herodes Atticus) at Athens.
Of his voluminous output of speeches and other writings, nothing unquestionably authentic survives ….
Haven’t we read that sort of thing before!’
Herod Atticus much resembles our composite Herod ‘the Great’ (= Philip/Marcus Agrippa) in his Greek-ness; he was filthy rich; had Greco-Roman connections; his friendship with the emperor; his activities in Asia; his buildings on a massive scale.
But, above all, Herodes Atticus “served as a governor of Judaea”:
Parallel Lives, Also BC Afterglows In AD 