ing by a sudden onset, or by open force; but for him
to kill them on the sudden, in order to gratify a passion that governed
him, was a demonstration of insufferable impiety. He also was guilty of
so great a crime in his older age; nor will the delays that he made,
and the length of time in which the thing was done, plead at all for his
excuse; for when a man is on a sudden amazed, and in commotion of mind,
and then commits a wicked action, although this be a heavy crime, yet is
it a thing that frequently happens; but to do it upon deliberation, and
after frequent attempts, and as frequent puttings-off, to undertake it
at last, and accomplish it, was the action of a murderous mind, and
such as was not easily moved from that which is evil. And this temper he
showed in what he did afterward, when he did not spare those that seemed
to be the best beloved of his friends that were left, wherein, though
the justice of the punishment caused those that perished to be the less
pitied, yet was the barbarity of the man here equal, in that he did not
abstain from their slaughter also. But of those persons we shall have
occasion to discourse more hereafter.

BOOK XVII. Containing The Interval Of Fourteen Years.

From The Death Of Alexander And Aristobulus To The Banishment Of
Archelaus.

CHAPTER 1. How Antipater Was Hated By All The Nation [Of The Jews] For
The Slaughter Of His Brethren; And How, For That Reason He Got Into
Peculiar Favor With His Friends At Rome, By Giving Them Many Presents;
As He Did Also With Saturninus, The President Of Syria And The Governors
Who Were Under Him; And Concerning Herod's Wives And Children.

1. When Antipater had thus taken off his brethren, and had brought his
father into the highest degree of impiety, till he was haunted with
furies for what he had done, his hopes did not succeed to his mind, as
to the rest of his life; for although he was delivered from the fear of
his brethren being his rivals as to the government, yet did he find it
a very hard thing, and almost impracticable, to come at the kingdom,
because the hatred of the nation against him on that account was become
very great; and besides this very disagreeable circumstance, the affair
of the soldiery grieved him still more, who were alienated from him,
from which yet these kings derived all the safety which they had,
whenever they found the nation desirous of innovation: and all this
danger was drawn upon him by his destruc