Antiquities of the Jews — Book 16, Chapter 5

1. About this time it was that Cæsarea Sebaste, which he had built, was
finished. The entire building being accomplished: in the tenth year, the
solemnity of it fell into the twenty-eighth year of Herod's reign, and
into the hundred and ninety-second olympiad. There was accordingly a
great festival and most sumptuous preparations made presently, in order
to its dedication; for he had appointed a contention in music, and games
to be performed naked. He had also gotten ready a great number of those
that fight single combats, and of beasts for the like purpose; horse
races also, and the most chargeable of such sports and shows as used to
be exhibited at Rome, and in other places. He consecrated this combat to
Cæsar, and ordered it to be celebrated every fifth year. He also sent
all sorts of ornaments for it out of his own furniture, that it might
want nothing to make it decent; nay, Julia, Cæsar's wife, sent a great
part of her most valuable furniture [from Rome], insomuch that he had no
want of any thing. The sum of them all was estimated at five hundred
talents. Now when a great multitude was come to that city to see the
shows, as well as the ambassadors whom other people sent, on account of
the benefits they had received from Herod, he entertained them all in
the public inns, and at public tables, and with perpetual feasts; this
solemnity having in the day time the diversions of the fights, and in
the night time such merry meetings as cost vast sums of money, and
publicly demonstrated the generosity of his soul; for in all his
undertakings he was ambitious to exhibit what exceeded whatsoever had
been done before of the same kind. And it is related that Cæsar and
Agrippa often said, that the dominions of Herod were too little for the
greatness of his soul; for that he deserved to have both all the kingdom
of Syria, and that of Egypt also.

2. After this solemnity and these festivals were over, Herod erected
another city in the plain called Capharsaba, where he chose out a fit
place, both for plenty of water and goodness of soil, and proper for the
production of what was there planted, where a river encompassed the city
itself, and a grove of the best trees for magnitude was round about it:
this he named Antipatris, from his father Antipater. He also built upon
another spot of ground above Jericho, of the same name with his mother,
a place of great security and very pleasant for habitation, and called
it Cypros. He also dedicated the finest monuments to his brother
Phasaelus, on account of the great natural affection there had been
between them, by erecting a tower in the city itself, not less than the
tower of Pharos, which he named Phasaelus, which was at once a part of
the strong defenses of the city, and a memorial for him that was
deceased, because it bare his name. He also built a city of the same
name in the valley of Jericho, as you go from it northward, whereby he
rendered the neighboring country more fruitful by the cultivation its
inhabitants introduced; and this also he called Phasaelus.

3. But as for his other benefits, it is impossible to reckon them up,
those which he bestowed on cities, both in Syria and in Greece, and in
all the places he came to in his voyages; for he seems to have
conferred, and that after a most plentiful manner, what would minister
to many necessities, and the building of public works, and gave them the
money that was necessary to such works as wanted it, to support them
upon the failure of their other revenues: but what was the greatest and
most illustrious of all his works, he erected Apollo's temple at Rhodes,
at his own expenses, and gave them a great number of talents of silver
for the repair of their fleet. He also built the greatest part of the
public edifices for the inhabitants of Nicopolis, at Actium; 6 and for
the Antiochinus, the inhabitants of the principal city of Syria, where a
broad street cuts through the place lengthways, he built cloisters along
it on both sides, and laid the open road with polished stone, and was of
very great advantage to the inhabitants. And as to the olympic games,
which were in a very low condition, by reason of the failure of their
revenues, he recovered their reputation, and appointed revenues for
their maintenance, and made that solemn meeting more venerable, as to
the sacrifices and other ornaments; and by reason of this vast
liberality, he was generally declared in their inscriptions to be one of
the perpetual managers of those games.

4. Now some there are who stand amazed at the diversity of Herod's
nature and purposes; for when we have respect to his magnificence, and
the benefits which he bestowed on all mankind, there is no possibility
for even those that had the least respect for him to deny, or not openly
to confess, that he had a nature vastly beneficent; but when any one
looks upon the punishments he inflicted, and the injuries he did, not
only to his subjects, but to his nearest relations, and takes notice of
his severe and unrelenting disposition there, he will be forced to allow
that he was brutish, and a stranger to all humanity; insomuch that these
men suppose his nature to be different, and sometimes at contradiction
with itself; but I am myself of another opinion, and imagine that the
occasion of both these sort of actions was one and the same; for being a
man ambitious of honor, and quite overcome by that passion, he was
induced to be magnificent, wherever there appeared any hopes of a future
memorial, or of reputation at present; and as his expenses were beyond
his abilities, he was necessitated to be harsh to his subjects; for the
persons on whom he expended his money were so many, that they made him a
very bad procurer of it; and because he was conscious that he was hated
by those under him, for the injuries he did them, he thought it not an
easy thing to amend his offenses, for that it was inconvenient for his
revenue; he therefore strove on the other side to make their ill- will
an occasion of his gains. As to his own court, therefore, if any one was
not very obsequious to him in his language, and would not confess
himself to be his slave, or but seemed to think of any innovation in his
government, he was not able to contain himself, but prosecuted his very
kindred and friends, and punished them as if they were enemies and this
wickedness he undertook out of a desire that he might be himself alone
honored. Now for this, my assertion about that passion of his, we have
the greatest evidence, by what he did to honor Cæsar and Agrippa, and
his other friends; for with what honors he paid his respects to them who
were his superiors, the same did he desire to be paid to himself; and
what he thought the most excellent present he could make another, he
discovered an inclination to have the like presented to himself. But now
the Jewish nation is by their law a stranger to all such things, and
accustomed to prefer righteousness to glory; for which reason that
nation was not agreeable to him, because it was out of their power to
flatter the king's ambition with statues or temples, or any other such
performances; And this seems to me to have been at once the occasion of
Herod's crimes as to his own courtiers and counselors, and of his
benefactions as to foreigners and those that had no relation to him.