try of Auranitis; and that on the following
occasion: Zenodorus, who had hired the house of Lysanias, had all along
sent robbers out of Trachonitis among the Damascenes; who thereupon had
recourse to Varro, the president of Syria, and desired of him that he
would represent the calamity they were in to Caesar. When Caesar was
acquainted with it, he sent back orders that this nest of robbers should
be destroyed. Varro therefore made an expedition against them, and
cleared the land of those men, and took it away from Zenodorus. Caesar
did also afterward bestow it on Herod, that it might not again become
a receptacle for those robbers that had come against Damascus. He
also made him a procurator of all Syria, and this on the tenth year
afterward, when he came again into that province; and this was so
established, that the other procurators could not do any thing in the
administration without his advice: but when Zenodorus was dead, Caesar
bestowed on him all that land which lay between Trachonitis and Galilee.
Yet, what was still of more consequence to Herod, he was beloved by
Caesar next after Agrippa, and by Agrippa next after Caesar; whence he
arrived at a very great degree of felicity. Yet did the greatness of his
soul exceed it, and the main part of his magnanimity was extended to the
promotion of piety.

CHAPTER 21.

Of The [Temple And] Cities That Were Built By Herod And
Erected From The Very Foundations; As Also Of Those Other
Edifices That Were Erected By Him; And What Magnificence He
Showed To Foreigners; And How Fortune Was In All Things
Favorable To Him.

1. Accordingly, in the fifteenth year of his reign, Herod rebuilt the
temple, and encompassed a piece of land about it with a wall, which land
was twice as large as that before enclosed. The expenses he laid
out upon it were vastly large also, and the riches about it were
unspeakable. A sign of which you have in the great cloisters that were
erected about the temple, and the citadel which was on its north side.
The cloisters he built from the foundation, but the citadel [32] he
repaired at a vast expense; nor was it other than a royal palace, which
he called Antonia, in honor of Antony. He also built himself a palace in
the Upper city, containing two very large and most beautiful apartments;
to which the holy house itself could not be compared [in largeness]. The
one apartment he named Caesareum, and the other Agrippium, from his