cts, but to his nearest relations, and takes notice of
his severe and unrelenting disposition there, he will be forced to allow
that he was brutish, and a stranger to all humanity; insomuch that these
men suppose his nature to be different, and sometimes at contradiction
with itself; but I am myself of another opinion, and imagine that the
occasion of both these sort of actions was one and the same; for being
a man ambitious of honor, and quite overcome by that passion, he was
induced to be magnificent, wherever there appeared any hopes of a future
memorial, or of reputation at present; and as his expenses were beyond
his abilities, he was necessitated to be harsh to his subjects; for the
persons on whom he expended his money were so many, that they made him a
very bad procurer of it; and because he was conscious that he was hated
by those under him, for the injuries he did them, he thought it not an
easy thing to amend his offenses, for that it was inconvenient for his
revenue; he therefore strove on the other side to make their ill-will
an occasion of his gains. As to his own court, therefore, if any one
was not very obsequious to him in his language, and would not confess
himself to be his slave, or but seemed to think of any innovation in his
government, he was not able to contain himself, but prosecuted his very
kindred and friends, and punished them as if they were enemies and this
wickedness he undertook out of a desire that he might be himself alone
honored. Now for this, my assertion about that passion of his, we have
the greatest evidence, by what he did to honor Caesar and Agrippa, and
his other friends; for with what honors he paid his respects to them who
were his superiors, the same did he desire to be paid to himself; and
what he thought the most excellent present he could make another, he
discovered an inclination to have the like presented to himself. But
now the Jewish nation is by their law a stranger to all such things,
and accustomed to prefer righteousness to glory; for which reason that
nation was not agreeable to him, because it was out of their power to
flatter the king's ambition with statues or temples, or any other such
performances; And this seems to me to have been at once the occasion
of Herod's crimes as to his own courtiers and counselors, and of his
benefactions as to foreigners and those that had no relation to him.

CHAPTER 6. An Embassage In Cyrene And Asia To Caesar, Concerning