HEROD THE GREAT

Michael Grant, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1971.

The Herod of popular tradition is the tyrant who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents and died a terrible death as the judgement of God. But Michael Grant’s biography paints a much more complex picture.

Herod devoted his life to the task of keeping the Jews prosperous and racially intact. To judge by the two disastrous Jewish rebellions that occured within a hundred and fifty years of his death – those the Jews called the First and Second Roman Wars – he was not, in the long run, completely successful. But perhaps no one could have done more to prevent disaster than he did. For forty years Herod walked the most precarious of political tightropes. For he had to be enough of a Jew to retain control of his Jewish subjects, and enough of a pro-Roman to preserve the confidence of Rome, within whose territory his kingdom fell.

For more than a quarter of a century he was one of the chief bulwarks of Augustus’ empire in the east. He made Judaea a large and prosperous country. He founded cities and built public works on a scale never seen before: of these, recently excavated Masada is a spectacular example. And all this in spite of an undercurrent of protest and underground resistance.

Michael Grant also throws light on Herod’s relationships with his famous contemporaries – in particular, Mark Anthony, Augustus and Cleopatra. The numerous illustrations present portraits and coins, buildings and articles of everyday use, landscapes and fortresses, and subsequent generations’ interpretations of the more famous events, actual and mythical, of Herod’s career.

 There are some very minor splits and edgewear to the dust jacket. Other than this both the book and the dust jacket are in good condition, the pages are clean and tightly bound.