was skillful in mixing such drugs, that she might prepare a love potion
for Pheroras; and that instead of a love potion, she had given him
deadly poison; and that this was done by the management of Sylleus, who
was acquainted with that woman.

2. The king was deeply affected with so many suspicions, and had the
maid-servants and some of the free women also tortured; one of which
cried out in her agonies, "May that God that governs the earth and
the heaven punish this author of all these our miseries, Antipater's
mother!" The king took a handle from this confession, and proceeded to
inquire further into the truth of the matter. So this woman discovered
the friendship of Antipater's mother to Pheroras, and Antipater's women,
as also their secret meetings, and that Pheroras and Antipater had drunk
with them for a whole night together as they returned from the king,
and would not suffer any body, either man-servant or maidservant, to be
there; while one of the free women discovered the matter.

3. Upon this Herod tortured the maid-servants every on by themselves
separately, who all unanimously agreed in the foregoing discoveries,
and that accordingly by agreement they went away, Antipater to Rome, and
Pheroras to Perea; for that they oftentimes talked to one another thus:
That after Herod had slain Alexander and Aristobulus, he would fall upon
them, and upon their wives, because, after he Mariamne and her children
he would spare nobody; and that for this reason it was best to get as
far off the wild beast as they were able:--and that Antipater oftentimes
lamented his own case before his mother, and said to her, that he had
already gray hairs upon his head, and that his father grew younger again
every day, and that perhaps death would overtake him before he should
begin to be a king in earnest; and that in case Herod should die, which
yet nobody knew when it would be, the enjoyment of the succession could
certainly be but for a little time; for that these heads of Hydra, the
sons of Alexander and Aristobulus, were growing up: that he was deprived
by his father of the hopes of being succeeded by his children, for that
his successor after his death was not to be any one of his own sons,
but Herod the son of Mariamne: that in this point Herod was plainly
distracted, to think that his testament should therein take place; for
he would take care that not one of his posterity should remain, because
he was of all fathers the great