rs, and embraced one
another with a most tender affection. But as the king gave more and more
assurances of his belief of her fidelity, and endeavored to draw her to
a like confidence in him, Marianme said, "Yet was not that command thou
gavest, that if any harm came to thee from Antony, I, who had been no
occasion of it, should perish with thee, a sign of thy love to me?"
When these words were fallen from her, the king was shocked at them, and
presently let her go out of his arms, and cried out, and tore his hair
with his own hands, and said, that "now he had an evident demonstration
that Joseph had had criminal conversation" with his wife; for that he
would never have uttered what he had told him alone by himself, unless
there had been such a great familiarity and firm confidence between
them. And while he was in this passion he had like to have killed his
wife; but being still overborne by his love to her, he restrained this
his passion, though not without a lasting grief and disquietness of
mind. However, he gave order to slay Joseph, without permitting him to
come into his sight; and as for Alexandra, he bound her, and kept her in
custody, as the cause of all this mischief.

CHAPTER 4. How Cleopatra, When She Had Gotten From Antony Some Parts Of
Judea And Arabia Came Into Judea; And How Herod Gave Her Many Presents
And Conducted Her On Her Way Back To Egypt.

1. Now at this time the affairs of Syria were in confusion by
Cleopatra's constant persuasions to Antony to make an attempt upon every
body's dominions; for she persuaded him to take those dominions away
from their several princes, and bestow them upon her; and she had a
mighty influence upon him, by reason of his being enslaved to her by
his affections. She was also by nature very covetous, and stuck at no
wickedness. She had already poisoned her brother, because she knew that
he was to be king of Egypt, and this when he was but fifteen years old;
and she got her sister Arsinoe to be slain, by the means of Antony, when
she was a supplicant at Diana's temple at Ephesus; for if there were
but any hopes of getting money, she would violate both temples and
sepulchers. Nor was there any holy place that was esteemed the most
inviolable, from which she would not fetch the ornaments it had in
it; nor any place so profane, but was to suffer the most flagitious
treatment possible from her, if it could but contribute somewhat to the
covetous humor of this wicke