The Portraits of Mariamme and Aristoboulus (Ant. 15.23-31)
After Herod had captured Jerusalem with the help of Sosius and his Hasmonean opponent Antigonus had been executed by Mark Antony, Herod put the things of the kingdom in order step by step.
One of his measures concerned the appointment of a new high priest, called Ananel (Ant. 15.22).[457] It is important to note that Josephus as narrator offers two comments at this point; he says:He also secretly arranged other things to the benefit of his rule, but the outcome for him was that disagreements also arose among persons within his household (rd περί την οικίαν έστασιασθη). For, he avoided appointing one of the distinguished priests as high priest of God and sent for a rather obscure priest (ιερέα των ασημότερων) from Babylon.
Here, at this early stage of the Herod narrative already, Josephus offers a combined general statement about the king’s reign that implies that he may have been efficient and successful as a ruler, but also that he was confronted with serious conflicts within his family. This motif will return time and again in the Antiquities narrative concerning Herod.[458] The second comment concerns the status of Ananel’s family, which is formulated rather negatively here in comparison to Ant. 15.40, which simply states that Ananel came from a high priestly family (αρχιερατικού γένους). Both comments prepare the reader for a series of conflicts between Herod and his motherin-law Alexandra (Ant. 15.23-87), whose son Aristoboulus was an obvious candidate for the high priesthood.
In the next paragraph Josephus introduces Alexandra to the readers.
She was furious about Ananel’s appointment according to Josephus. Josephus notes that she could not bear Herod’s insulting treatment of her (ούκ ηνεγκεν την επήρειαν; cf. 15.44). Alexandra (Alexandra II) was the daughter of Hyrcanus II.[459] She is one of the main characters in Book 15 of the Antiquities, until her execution told in Ant. 15.251.[460] She acts as one of Herod’s major opponents at the court and is continuously scheming against the king.[461]The episode (Ant. 15.23-31) shows how a mother at a royal court could act as broker of her son’s interests. The context implies that Alexandra felt insulted about Ananel’s appointment as high priest (15.24). Her son Aris- toboulus III was the logical candidate for the succession of his grandfather Hyrcanus II as high priest, apart from the fact that he still was very young at this time (see below). Josephus reports that Alexandra made a bold move. She wrote a secret letter to Cleopatra in order to request from Antony the high priesthood for her son Aristoboulus (15.24).[462] Cleopatra VII apparently functioned as a contact person for Alexandra in order to get access to Mark Antony.[463] As a matter of fact, Josephus refers to three letters by Alexandra to Cleopatra (15.24, 32, 45-49, 62), which are all obvious attempts to go against Herod. These bold steps implied a very serious betrayal of her son-in-law. They were also very dangerous for Herod, because Cleopatra seems to have been his most powerful opponent. She could easily affect the crucial relationship with his patron Mark Antony during these years.[464]
The follow-up of this letter in Ant. 15.25-31 probably presupposes that the readers know about Mark Antony’s bad reputation concerning love affairs and sex.[465] Josephus first notes that Antony responded rather indifferently to Alexandra’s letter, but somehow his representative Dellius arrived soon afterwards in Judea and met with Alexandra and her children (15.25).[466] Josephus had noted at the beginning of this episode already that Mariamme and Aristoboulus were exceptionally beautiful (15.23), and this information is repeated in connection with Dellius’s visit:
(when...
Dellius) saw Aristoboulus, he was impressed by his youthful elegance (ώρα). He admired the tall stature and beauty of the boy (to μέγεθος- και κάλλος), and no less the beauty of Mariamme, who was living in wedlock with the king. [467] [468] It was clear that he believed Alexandra was somebody blessed with beautiful children (καλλίπαις).Having seen the extraordinary beauty of Mariamme and Aristoboulus, Del- lius devised a wicked plan: he proposed Alexandra to have the portraits of her children sent over to Antony, “For if he would see those, she would not fail to obtain anything she asked” (15.26). Alexandra apparently made no bones about having a portrait of her children produced for Antony.[469] A famous papyrus text from the second century C.E. implies that sending over portraits was rather common practice in antiquity.[470] The implication of sending Mariamme and Aristoboulus’s portraits over to Mark Antony is fully clear; it would anticipate sexual relationships between Antony and Alexandra’s children. The exceptional beauty of Mariamme and Aris- toboulus made them attractive as sexual partners.[471] This is not only indicated by Josephus’s explicit description of Dellius’s motive (“This was undertaken by him in order to draw Antony into sexual pleasures.” [15.27]),[472] but it also becomes obvious in Ant. 15.28, which describes Antony’s response to the proposal:[473] [474] But Antony feared summoning the girl, who was married to Herod, and he wanted to avoid that slander would be passed on to Cleopatra because of such an affair. So, he commanded (Dellius) to send the son in a respectable way, adding: “if it is no burden.” Antony’s response clearly presupposes that he knew at this stage of the exceptional beauty of Mariamme and Aristoboulus. Herod prevented a trip to Antony by Aristoboulus, as Ant. 15.29-30 indicates, by pointing to the political unrest that may have followed upon Aristoboulus’s departure (15.29). Once more it is obvious that the purpose of the trip would have been the sexual entertainment of Antony: “(he was) prepared to use him for erotic diversion” (τοϊ$ ερωτικοί^, 15.29). Aristoboulus’s age - he was merely sixteen (15.29) - was apparently an additional reason for Herod for not letting him go. Being still a “boy” (παι$), Aristoboulus was all the more attractive for Antony as junior sexual part- 22 ner. The narrative of this episode indicates that Alexandra recklessly appealed to Cleopatra, Herod’s major opponent, and that she was also prepared to use the beauty of her children to have her own way against Herod by offering them to Antony as temporary sexual partners. This suggests that Alexandra was extremely ambitious and unscrupulous, as well as wicked. It is hard to imagine a mother who offers her own children up for sexual pleasures to others, but this very negative image matches Josephus’s portrayal of Alexandra in subsequent passages. An additional motif in these passages is that Alexandra aimed at a coup and tried to restore the Hasmonean rule over Judea, which is still absent in the portraits episode.[477] In any case, in Ant. 15.23-31, Alexandra, and not Herod, is clearly the villain. The narrative suggests that Herod was able to control the damage caused by Alexandra’s ruthless behavior in a prudent way. B.