amounted to two hundred talents. Upon
these confessions Herod presently thought he had somewhat to depend on,
in his own opinion, as to his suspicion about his sons; so he took up
Alexander and bound him: yet did he still continue to be uneasy, and was
not quite satisfied of the truth of what he had heard; and when he
came to recollect himself, he found that they had only made juvenile
complaints and contentions, and that it was an incredible thing, that
when his son should have slain him, he should openly go to Rome [to beg
the kingdom]; so he was desirous to have some surer mark of his son's
wickedness, and was very solicitous about it, that he might not appear
to have condemned him to be put in prison too rashly; so he tortured the
principal of Alexander's friends, and put not a few of them to death,
without getting any of the things out of them which he suspected. And
while Herod was very busy about this matter, and the palace was full of
terror and trouble, one of the younger sort, when he was in the utmost
agony, confessed that Alexander had sent to his friends at Rome, and
desired that he might be quickly invited thither by Caesar, and that
he could discover a plot against him; that Mithridates, the king of
Parthia, was joined in friendship with his father against the Romans,
and that he had a poisonous potion ready prepared at Askelori.

5. To these accusations Herod gave credit, and enjoyed hereby, in his
miserable case, some sort of consolation, in excuse of his rashness, as
fiattering himself with finding things in so bad a condition; but as for
the poisonous potion, which he labored to find, he could find none. As
for Alexander, he was very desirous to aggravate the vast misfortunes he
was under, so he pretended not to deny the accusations, but punished the
rashness of his father with a greater crime of his own; and perhaps
he was willing to make his father ashamed of his easy belief of such
calumnies: he aimed especially, if he could gain belief to his story,
to plague him and his whole kingdom; for he wrote four letters, and sent
them to him, that he did not need to torture any more persons, for he
had plotted against him; and that he had for his partners Pheroras and
the most faithful of his friends; and that Salome came in to him by
night, and that she lay with him whether he would or not; and that all
men were come to be of one mind, to make away with him as soon as they
could, and so get clear of the co