G. does not aim this work at a scholarly audience. The author, a successful freelance writer and journalist, composes for a wider readership. Documentation is kept to a minimum, only endnotes with references for brief quotations, ancient and modern. G. avoids any discussion of sources and any critique of their approach or their reliability. That is perhaps allowable in a book that targets a broad audience. But G.’s deliberate dispensing with almost all dates in his text seems wilfully wayward. (There is a time line as part of the front matter.) That may take concern for the layperson's dread of dates a bit too far. History buffs do like them.
What will the ‘general reader’ gain from this study? G. claims that he seeks to modify the usual negative and one-dimensional impression of Herod the Great. He will present the portrait of ‘a constructive and fascinating historical figure’ (p. xvii), a ‘complex, driven, dynamic, and largely constructive tyrant, statesman, and visionary’ (p. 144; cf. 140). That is a perfectly defensible position. Indeed much recent work on Herod has been moving in that direction (e.g. S. Rocca, Herod's Judaea [2008]; D. Jacobson and N. Kokkinos, Herod and Augustus [2009]). But such a picture is difficult to derive from the pages of this book. G. regularly accounts for Herod's actions and behaviour in terms of paranoia and deep-seated psychological distress, punctuated by obsessive vindictiveness (e.g. pp. 70, 77, 78, 112, 138). That interpretation coincides in large part with the recent and controversial work of A. Kasher (King Herod: a Persecuted Persecutor [2007]). Even if sound, the portrait does little to challenge the negative analysis of Herod's character and actions.
The book, in fact, is rather short on analysis. In the absence of documentation, G. often supplies confident but largely unargued assertions about Herod's thoughts or feelings. So, for example, Herod ordered the killing of his wife because he could not ‘stomach the thought of another man ever enjoying her favors’ (p. 57). Upon taking the throne, he ‘lost the sense of invulnerability’ (p. 58). The intra-family manoeuvrings and conduct ‘subjected him to the harrowing mental stress that would plague him to the last day of his life’ (p. 112). And G.’s sweeping statement that Herod had ‘deep feelings of love for members of his family’ (p. 38) is hard to square with the rash of executions and murderous actions taken against them by the king. The stark discordance here does not receive elucidation. The bulk of the book concerns itself with palace intrigue, with the familial feuds within the royal household, with the fierce battles among siblings, wives and in-laws, the detentions and the executions that marked life (and deaths) at the court. This, of course, is what makes the reign of Herod so captivating a subject to readers outside the scholarly community and a legitimate focus for G.’s treatment. But it hardly speaks to the professed effort to rehabilitate the king.
Numerous other aspects of Herod's years go well beyond the internal squabbles and bloodshed and raise broader issues of real importance. But they get short shrift in this treatment. For example, Herod's relationship to the Jews of the diaspora deserves some discussion. G. briefly mentions the tour of Asia Minor in the company of Agrippa and then turns back immediately to family intrigues and the soap opera in the palace (p. 105). Yet the visit to Asia Minor was exceptional rather than typical. Herod's generous benefactions elsewhere to various cities of the Mediterranean had little to do with diaspora Jews. They consisted of pagan temples, theatres, amphitheatres, gymnasia and civic buildings. This was the posture of the Hellenistic monarch, not the champion of the Jews. And what of Judaea's relations with Rome? G. does treat them, but almost always with regard to Herod and top-level Roman officialdom. We get no sense of wider sentiments in Judaea, of nationalist feelings that created tensions and generated hostilities to Herod as a creature of Rome. Considerable animosity existed. The various fortresses that Herod built in Judaea, Samaria and Galilee were not there simply as potential refuges, nor as alternative dwelling places, but as advertisements of power and a means of intimidating enemies of the regime.
The whole issue of Herod's relation to Judaism, his outlook on Jewish traditions and practices, and the image of the regime in Jewish eyes is central to the successes (and failures) of the Herodian years. They are barely touched on in the book. How, for instance, should one understand the building of a theatre, an amphitheatre and a hippodrome in Jerusalem, the same in Caesarea and in Jericho? Even more striking were the temples to Roma and Augustus in Sebaste, Caesarea and Paneion, ostensibly an overt promotion of the imperial cult in the Jewish homeland. Josephus claimed that such foreign practices undermined the traditional ways of life (Ant. 15.267, 274–5). Yet we have little evidence of resistance to such institutions – or of the need for compulsion in establishing them. It would have been useful to offer some analysis of this apparent paradox and of its meaning both for Herod's intentions and for Jewish attitudes. G. does note that Herod faithfully observed traditional dietary laws and other Jewish rituals and prescriptions, in addition to the spectacular rebuilding of the Temple, for which he spared no expense and through which he exhibited his adherence to the faith of the fathers. But G. undercuts the significance of these actions by suggesting that Herod's religious observances may have been disingenuous, a mere show to soften the antagonism of his subjects (p. 96). That is too easy an explanation. And it is made less plausible by G.’s comparison of Herod to an oriental monarch, eunuchs and all, rather than a traditional Jewish king (p. 97), not exactly a posture to win over disaffected Jews. G. sets the discontent with the regime in the context of Jewish unhappiness with ‘Hellenization’ (pp. 98–100). But, however one wishes to define that elusive term, the practices to which he alludes had been around for a long time. The Hasmoneans had engaged in Hellenistic diplomacy, installed Hellenistic institutions, employed Hellenistic coinage and adopted Hellenistic names for a century, without abandoning Jewish traditions or beliefs. As G. observes, Herod departed from long-standing religious practice in appointing, demoting and even re-appointing High Priests at will or at whim (pp. 50–2). How to account for this? G. offers no explication of the tensions between such a policy and the honouring of Jewish traditions in other ways.
Herod twice imposed oaths of loyalty upon his subjects (Jos. Ant. 15.368–71, 17.41–2). That certainly implies a level of distrust between ruler and ruled. What were its origins? Certainly not just unhappiness with court intrigue and family friction. One would like to have seen more analysis of reasons for Jewish hostility to Herod: for example economic distress, heavy exactions for building programmes that largely benefited gentiles, ruthlessness towards foes (not just within the family), manipulation of the high priesthood for his own ends, problematic foreign policy that involved periodic clashes with Parthians, Nabataeans and others. A broader canvas would have been illuminating. Animosity came to a head at the end of Herod's life. The incident of the golden eagle, set by Herod over the great Gate of the Jerusalem Temple, inflamed passions, led to its removal and destruction by young Jews furious with the regime, and then the savage execution of the perpetrators on Herod's orders. G. mentions the incident (pp. 134–5), but does not explore its roots or its ramifications for the perception of Herod in the eyes of the Jewish populace. To pursue such a dramatic episode and a few others of this sort in some detail in order to recover the implications and significance would not have diminished the interest of the general reader. It might actually have enhanced it.
