Jerusalem: The Biography

Crassus, known in Rome as Dives, the Rich Man, was notorious for his avarice and cruelty. He had added victims to the Roman dictator Sulla’s death-lists purely to seize their money, while he had celebrated his suppression of the Spartacus rebellion by crucifying 6,000 slaves along the Appian Way. Now he planned an expedition to throw back the new Parthian kingdom that had replaced the Persians and Seleucids in today’s Iraq and Iran.

Crassus funded his invasion by raiding the Temple in Jerusalem, whence he stole 2,000 talents untouched by Pompey and the ‘beam of solid gold’ in the Holy of Holies. But the Parthians annihilated Crassus and his army. The Parthian king Orad II was watching a Greek play when Crassus’ head was tossed on stage. Orad had molten gold poured into Crassus’ mouth, saying, ‘Be satisfied now with thy life’s desire.’³⁵

Now Rome’s two strongmen, Caesar and Pompey, competed for supremacy. In 49 BC, Caesar crossed the Rubicon from Gaul and invaded Italy, defeating Pompey eighteen months later. Pompey fled to Egypt. Elected dictator of Rome, Caesar gave chase, arriving in Egypt two days after the Egyptians had murdered Pompey. He was horrified yet relieved to receive Pompey’s pickled head as a welcoming gift. He had campaigned in the East thirty years earlier. Now he found Egypt divided in a vicious struggle between King Ptolemy XIII and his sister-wife Cleopatra VII to secure for Rome the richest prize of the East: Egypt. But he could not have foreseen how this young queen, deposed from the throne and in desperate straits, would shape his will to her own ends.

Cleopatra demanded a secret audience with the master of the Roman empire. This accomplished impresario of sexual-political pantomime had herself carried into Caesar’s palace wrapped in a laundry bag (not a carpet) – perhaps divining that he was susceptible to such theatrical excitement. Gaius Julius Caesar, battleworn and grizzled, was fifty-two and self-conscious about his balding pate. But this astounding if somewhat chilling life-force, possessed of all the talents of war, letters and politics, and the remorseless energy of a younger man, was also a sexual adventurer who had slept with the wives of both Crassus and Pompey. Cleopatra was twenty-one: ‘her beauty was absolutely not without parallel but her physical attractions, combined with her persuasive charm and the aura she projected’ exerted a powerful fascination, even if, as coins and statues suggest, she possessed the aquiline nose and pointed chin of her forebears. She had a kingdom to reclaim and a peerless lineage to live up to. Both Caesar and Cleopatra were keen practitioners of the adventurous school of politics. They embarked on an affair – she soon bore him a child, Caesarion – but, more importantly, he was now committed to back her.

Caesar soon found himself trapped in Alexandria as the Egyptians rose against Cleopatra and her Roman patron. Meanwhile in Jerusalem, Antipater, Pompey’s ally, saw a chance of redeeming himself with Caesar. He marched on Egypt with 3,000 Jewish troops, persuaded the Egyptian Jews to back him, and attacked Caesar’s opponents. Caesar triumphed and restored Cleopatra. Before returning to Rome, the grateful Caesar reappointed Hyrcanus as high priest and ethnarch – ruler – of the Jews and let him repair Jerusalem’s walls, but he granted all the power to Antipater as procurator of Judaea with his sons as the local tetrarchs: the elder one, Phasael, ran Jerusalem; the younger, Herod, got Galilee.

Herod, aged just fifteen, immediately showed his mettle when he hunted down and killed a band of fanatical religious Jews. In Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin were incensed by young Herod’s unauthorized killings and summoned him for trial. However, the Romans appreciated that Antipater and his sons were the sort of allies required to govern this turbulent people. The Roman governor of Syria ordered Herod’s acquittal and awarded him greater powers.