Conclusion
My discussion of the women at King Herod’s court in the first part of Josephus’s Antiquities 15 has a narratological focus and deals, therefore, mainly with Josephus’s presentation of these women.
The women discussed all belonged to Herod’s family. In the Antiquities Josephus emphasizes time and again that the events within Herod’s family were full of conflicts and disasters, which strongly contrasts with the obvious success of the king’s rule in this part of the narrative. The Herod narrative in the Antiquities refers to several competing factions of women. In the sections discussed there is a faction from Herod’s own family with Salome and Cyprus as leaders, as well as a Hasmonean faction with Mariamme and Alexandra as main protagonists.[537]There are two important narrative threads in Antiquities 15 concerning these women. Salome is presented as the woman who, supported by her mother, wickedly and persistently plans the downfall of Mariamme. The section that leads up to Mariamme’s execution suggests, contrary to the depiction in the War, that Herod several times became very angry with Mariamme, because of her frankness and arrogant behavior. Nevertheless, Herod apparently could not bring himself to have Mariamme killed. Salome and Cyprus prepared the queen’s fall by their slander about adultery, Salome set the trap with the cup-bearer, and Salome and her associates made the final cut when Herod still wanted to postpone Mariamme’s execution. Salome let no one stand in her way, not even her own husband Joseph, who was executed because of her accusation. Alexandra is the other evil female character in this section. Time and again, she undertook actions that undermined Herod’s rule and smacked of treason and rebellion. She is presented as an extremely egocentric person, who had no scruples in using her own daughter’s beauty for realizing her plans to restore Hasmonean rule, although this could ultimately have led to Mark Antony having sex with Mariamme.
Josephus’s narrative about the women is filled with allusions to sex and adultery anyway. The extremely negative portrayals of Salome and Alexandra have the effect on the readers that Herod’s role turns out relatively well. It is difficult, for example, to blame Herod for the death of Mari- amme if the readers see Salome working so consistently at bringing the queen down. Herod becomes a tragic character in this way. He was madly in love with Mariamme, but lost her tragically, as a result of Mariamme’s own arrogant behavior, but mainly because of the slander and wicked manipulations of Herod’s sister and his mother.
How plausible is all of this? The picture of several competing women factions at Herod’s court seems plausible enough, but the two factions that are important in this part of the Antiquities appear far less prominently in the parallel narrative of the War. Cyprus, Salome’s mother, is only mentioned once by name in the War in a reference to Antipater’s family (War 1.181).
Salome’s involvement in Mariamme’s death is partly confirmed by the War, but the War is less negative about her in this connection. Alexandra is entirely absent in the War. There is a serious problem with her long list of wicked and treacherous deeds in the Antiquities: why did Herod wait so long to execute Alexandra (Ant. 15.251) if she had really committed so many things that undermined his rule? There is indirect proof that one of her wicked deeds, sending the portraits of her children over to Antony, actually did not happen.[538] The War narrative does mention a portrait of Mariamme, but in a very different way. War 1.438-439 reports that Herod’s mother and sister accused Mariamme of adultery by fabricating, among other things, the stories that she had sent her portrait to Antony in Egypt. In short, it seems likely that Josephus has expanded the role of women factions and also magnified the ruthlessness of Salome and the wickedness of Alexandra. The implication of this narrative strategy seems to be that if one focuses upon the chain of events, Herod appears in a rather favorable light compared to Salome and Alexandra.
This reading of the Antiquities implies that Salome had to be blamed for Mariamme’s death much more than Herod himself, which raises the question whether Josephus himself left Salome (and Alexandra) to carry the can, or he derived this interpretation from a source. The latter assumption seems plausible, because by putting the blame on the women instead of Herod, Josephus may have done, at least to a certain extent, what he blames Nicolaus of Damascus for elsewhere. In one of Josephus’s references to Nicolaus he states: “Indeed, he even wants to elevate Mariamme and her sons’ death, so savagely arranged by the king, to dignity.” (Ant. 16.185).[539]Works Cited
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