n Augtus took it away from them.

[29] This seventh year of the reign of Herod [from the conquest or death
of Antigonus], with the great earthquake in the beginning of the same
spring, which are here fully implied to be not much before the fight at
Actium, between Octavius and Antony, and which is known from the
Roman historians to have been in the beginning of September, in the
thirty-first year before the Christian era, determines the chronology
of Josephus as to the reign of Herod, viz. that he began in the year 37,
beyond rational contradiction. Nor is it quite unworthy of our notice,
that this seventh year of the reign of Herod, or the thirty-first before
the Christian era, contained the latter part of a Sabbatic year, on
which Sabbatic year, therefore, it is plain this great earthquake
happened in Judea.

[30] This speech of Herod is set down twice by Josephus, here and Antiq.
B. XV. ch. 5. sect. 3, to the very same purpose, but by no means in
the same words; whence it appears that the sense was Herod's, but the
composition Josephus's.

[31] Since Josephus, both here and in his Antiq. B. XV. ch. 7. sect. 3,
reckons Gaza, which had been a free city, among the cities given Herod
by Augustus, and yet implies that Herod had made Costobarus a governor
of it before, Antiq. B. XV. ch. 7. sect. 9, Hardain has some pretense
for saying that Josephus here contradicted himself. But perhaps Herod
thought he had sufficient authority to put a governor into Gaza, after
he was made tetrarch or king, in times of war, before the city was
entirely delivered into his hands by Augustus.

[32] This fort was first built, as it is supposed, by John Hyrcanus; see
Prid. at the year 107; and called "Baris," the Tower or Citadel. It
was afterwards rebuilt, with great improvements, by Herod, under the
government of Antonius, and was named from him "the Tower of Antoni;"
and about the time when Herod rebuilt the temple, he seems to have put
his last hand to it. See Antiq. B. XVIII. ch. 5. sect. 4; Of the War, B.
I. ch. 3. sect. 3; ch. 5. sect. 4. It lay on the northwest side of the
temple, and was a quarter as large.

[33] That Josephus speaks truth, when he assures us that the haven of
this Cesarea was made by Herod not less, nay rather larger, than that
famous haven at Athens, called the Pyrecum, will appear, says Dean
Aldrich, to him who compares the descriptions of that at Athens in
Thucydides and Pausanias, with this of Cesarea in Jos