Original subtitles

Ancient Israel, 1st century BCE.

A ruthless King of Judea is struggling to keep his throne.

He had many, many enemies

and they remembered him as a wicked

king because of the way in which he dealt with his political opponents.

There are no holds barred for Herod the Great

in his pursuit of power.

He is jealous and paranoid.

He will do whatever is necessary,

even if that means killing his own family.

Most infamous of all his acts, allegedly,

a horrific mass infanticide to eliminate one baby -

Jesus of Nazareth.

People do monstrous, monstrous things

when power, wealth, status is on the line.

But there remains huge doubt about the historical accuracy

of this claim.

Using groundbreaking AI imagery,

we shall separate the myth from the truth.

Can new evidence re-assess Herod's role as a child-killer?

This whole picture of Herod

is simply missing from the Jewish edition.

Rulers come and go

but what legacy will the sands of time leave behind?

Herod the Great, was he truly a killer king?

Since its conquest by Rome in 63 BCE to this day,

the Kingdom of Judea; now the West Bank

has seen bitter disputes over who should rule the land.

Under Herod's rule in 37 BCE

even he has to walk a tightrope,

keeping his Jewish subjects in check

and his Roman rulers happy.

The complication for Herod's rule

is that he was living through a time of huge political change

within the world of the Roman Empire,

which kept him in power.

As Roman leaders rise and fall dozens of Judeans

are brutally executed under Herod,

as he struggles to assert control over the region.

Over the centuries his name has become a byword for terror.

Many people think about Herod strictly through the depiction

that we get in Matthew's gospel

of this extremely paranoid,

tyrannical figure who would call for something

as horrifically upsetting

as the massacre of innocents.

But when we think about Herod the Great, the historical figure,

we need to be looking past that.

Perhaps a complex man who is more than meets the eye?

He's also a man who really, truly understood

how to build a strong nation.

He clearly had an affinity for art, architecture and design.

The grand buildings that he engaged with,

they were beautiful, and he knew what he was doing there.

So, what truth can be established about Herod the Great?

Great or not so great?

A ruthless killer or a hapless pawn in a Roman territorial game?

So what did he do? Who was he?

The roots of what would become a range

of Herod's insecurities are perhaps found in his upbringing

under the rule of the Hasmoneans.

The Hasmoneans are a powerful Jewish dynasty

that governed the kingdom of Judea and its surrounding regions,

from around 140 BCE.

Herod was born probably in Jerusalem in 73 BCE,

his father was a courtier

of the Hasmonean high priest Hyrcanus who ruled in Jerusalem.

The Hasmoneans were a dynastic ruling family in Judea

that was pretty well liked by the Jewish people.

Herod was not Hasmonean;

his grandfather was a convert to Judaism.

His mother is Nabataean, so he's Arab on his mother's side.

A fact which left many of his future subjects sceptical,

was Herod originally Jewish at all?

Early in his life in Judea, the young Herod is already judged

by those around him as not being a 'real' jew.

My sense with Herod is that he has grown up in,

always existed in, only ever known

a world of insecurity, a world of being caught

between battling divisions.

His father, Antipater, had come from Edgemere,

which is an area south of Judea, around Hebron,

which had been converted to Judaism only two generations before.

So, although he was brought up within a Jewish environment,

he was brought up very much as an outsider.

He will have sensed it

and this will have made him agitated, confused, angry.

Even contemporaneous accounts of Herod's life

cast the same aspersions.

There were always doubts within the Jewish texts

whether he should really be considered as a Jew.

Quite unreasonably, really,

since conversion to Judaism was a very standard thing

by the time of Herod's ancestors who'd been converted.

The young Herod grows up battling against this injustice.

And it will have caused no small degree of destabilisation

of his mental state, as well as feeding into

considerable level of anger and resentment.

But through his well-connected father,

Herod has a chance to turn the tables.

In Galilee in 47 BCE,

when Julius Caesar was presiding over the Roman world,

Julius Caesar gave authority to Antipater, Herod's father,

to appoint his sons Governor,

Herod, to Galilee, and Herod's brother, Phasael to Jerusalem.

In his twenties and now Governor of Galilee,

Herod is already showing signs of ruthlessness.

According, that is, to Flavius Josephus,

a Roman-Jewish historian writing towards the end

of the 1st century BCE,

who was known to not be well-disposed towards Herod.

So any crimes he accuses Herod of or any details of Herod's life,

we really only have Josephus to go on.

That means that we have to...

take everything with a bit of a grain of salt.

One of the first things that he accuses Herod of

is when Herod was in the start of his career,

he captured a group of bandits

and had them executed without trial.

Very difficult now to tell

whether behind the description of bandits,

whether behind that lies something more political.

Whether these are freedom fighters we just don't know.

But it's clear that there were objections

to this kind of ruthlessness.

Herod's first killings aren't allowed

to pass without censure.

So this was an extrajudicial execution.

And that upset the families of those who were executed.

And they appealed to Hyrcanus the second

who was the high priest in Judea at the time

and asked that he call Herod to trial before the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin were the sort of High Court of Judea and Galilee.

So, this is the first time that Herod really

was getting into trouble for something that he had done.

But the young Galilean governor plans

to wheedle his way out of a tight spot.

Herod was summoned to Jerusalem to stand trial,

and Herod's response to that was, essentially,

to march on Jerusalem with troops and refuse to undergo trial.

Looking instead to Roman support so that he didn't have to follow

the laws that were being imposed by the Hasmonean High priest

who he's meant to serve.

Herod's brinkmanship fails spectacularly,

and he is forced to face the wrath of the Sanhedrin.

The custom was to show humility before the court

by appearing meek and dishevelled,

but Herod has other plans.

the Jewish historian Josephus records that Herod instead

came with his hair on his head, finely trimmed,

clean shaven face and dressed in purple.

So, what Josephus is telling us is that Herod was a bit shameless

Herod's vanity is legendary. We know he dyed his hair black.

But for me, psychologically, I think it's driven by his awareness

that he needs to appear strong and virile

in order to retain his power.

He was ostentatious,

he didn't have the right mannerisms for that context,

not that he didn't know it, but that he chose to avoid it.

So that gives us a good idea of Herod.

Herod then goes over the heads of the Jewish Judiciary

and appeals directly to the Romans.

It is they, after all, that are the real power in the land...

The Roman ruler of Syria at the time, Sextus,

he was an ally with Herod, and he pressured Hyrcanus the second

who was high priest to ensure

that Herod would not be found guilty of the charges against him.

And so, Herod ultimately is acquitted of that charge.

This tells us that Herod,

even in these early stages of his political career,

is a master of spin, of strategy.

It tells us that he has these finely honed political instincts.

He knows that this is the way to maintain any sense of one upmanship.

So very early in his career, this began his reputation

as somebody who was completely ruthless,

and this is the origins of his power.

The young governor of Galilee will stop at nothing

to get what he wants. Soon he sets his sights

on the ultimate prize... sovereignty over the entire kingdom of Judea.

Roman leader Julius Caesar has been assassinated.

His replacement, Mark Antony, is now defending the Empire.

He was facing a little bit of a crisis at home in Rome.

The eastern border of the Roman Empire was not

all that well secured and the Parthian forces,

the military force from Persia, crossed the border.

They managed to infiltrate into Roman territory

at the eastern reaches.

Rising star Herod, uses the crisis

to further his efforts to take complete control over Judea,

at the expense of his rival,

the Hasmonean High Priest Hyrcanus the Second.

The Parthian forces do indeed come down.

A number of battles ensue.

Herod loses. He's captured.

It doesn't work out so well for Hyrcanus the second either,

who is also captured and mutilated. He's castrated.

So, this means that he can no longer be high priest.

With the Jewish de facto king of Judea, Hyrcanus,

not the man he was, the way is clear for Herod's royal ambitions

if only he was not in prison.

Herod then escapes and he is fleeing south.

And, in his flight south,

sometimes he encounters other forces,

and they have to battle again.

And there's one battle in particular that happens amongst supporters

of the Hasmoneans just outside Bethlehem.

And Herod wins that battle quite decisively.

Herod is called to Rome

where the Senate rewards him for his victory.

Rome ultimately rewards him with kingship.

And that's how we get Herod the great king of the Jews.

Questions over the new king's Jewish heritage

continue to haunt him.

He came to power entirely

because he was appointed as King of Judea by the Roman state

and therefore had to impose his rule over Judea

as a puppet king of the Romans.

So the appointment of Herod having been made by Rome in 40 BCE

was as an outsider to the Judean political elite.

That meant that he was bound to find that there were a large number

of opponents from the previous regime.

When Herod returns to Jerusalem take the throne,

he finds that Hyrcanus' nephew Antigonus

has already proclaimed himself King.

Herod is helped by the Romans.

Antigonus is removed from power

only for another challenge to arise.

The Hasmoneans were pretty well liked by the Jewish people.

And The Hasmoneans both rule as king and as high priest.

But you need to have the patrilineal descent

to have that position.

And Herod did not. So, he could not be high Priest.

In order to try to establish himself more firmly

he married into the elite.

Despite already having a wife and a son,

Herod marries the 17-year-old granddaughter

of Hyrcanus the High Priest, Mariamne.

This second wife, Mariamne,

who was a princess from the Hasmonean ruling family,

which had ruled over Judea for the previous hundred years or so

and a great coup.

Herod's first wife Doris and their son Antipater

are banished from his court.

So marrying Mariamne,

that family that she's part of,

it legitimises Herod.

And that is incredibly important

because he doesn't have the lineage.

He's not from that dynastic family.

This is the point at which the family of Herod became, so

to speak, part of the establishment.

So, this outsider entering properly into the mainstream

of the Judean elite in a way which he couldn't have done before.

The royal couple soon have two sons

and heirs to Herod's throne, Alexander and Aristobulus,

with Hasmonean royal blood running through their veins!

The sons that they have together legitimise him.

These things are vital.

And it's good PR, it's a good strategy.

In Herod's eyes his beloved Mariamne

who gives him legitimacy is also a potential threat.

It was perfectly possible in the 40s and 30s BCE

for people to imagine that a powerful woman

from within the Hasmonean family

could rule over Judea.

There were powerful women ruling over neighbouring states,

of whom best known is Cleopatra in Egypt.

if Herod was suspicious of Mariamne's political intentions,

that was entirely reasonable.

This is a man who whose whole existence, whose whole personality

is defined by the sense of always needing to protect himself,

always living on his survival instincts.

The increasingly paranoid King of Judea even arranges

a back-up plan in the event of his own murder.

In one of his most dramatic gestures,

we know that Herod makes plans for his beloved wife Mariamne

to be executed

should he, Herod, die.

In order that she cannot take up with any other man.

This tells us so much about

the inner emotional landscape of this man.

The sense of paranoia,

He is prepared to do anything to ensure that that does not happen.

To further protect his position,

Herod decides to clean up his court

by ridding it of all disloyal Hasmoneans.

And that, for the first part of his reign,

was the main cause of his brutality

in getting rid of those political opponents.

Done actually, to surprising extent judicially.

So, with trials to show that they were treacherous,

meaning that they were threats to his rule,

after which they were put to death.

The King's ever watchful eye then turns towards his in-laws,

particularly Mariamne's handsome brother, Aristobulus.

Mariamne's brother, really wanted to be high priest.

There were public demonstrations requiring Herod to react

by sacking his first high priest and getting in Jonathan Aristobulus.

Jonathan Aristobulus at the age of 17, became high priest.

People got far too enthusiastic about him.

Suspicious of a threat to his throne,

Herod places his brother-in-law and mother-in-law

under surveillance by his own personal bodyguard.

Most of his control was done through police work,

he had spies all through his kingdom

who would tell him if there were any attempts against his rule.

Aristobulus and mother Alexandra hatch a plot

to flee to Egypt as guests of its celebrity queen Cleopatra VII.

But Herod uncovers their plans.

Jonathan Aristobulus was invited down to the palace in Jericho

and went swimming with friends

where they had some kind of game

which involved holding him under water.

And there was a terrible accident.

He died; he drowned.

That's what Herod said.

Jonathan Aristobulus' mother, Alexandra, complained bitterly

to her friend Cleopatra of Egypt

and Mark Antony, Cleopatra's consort,

that this was murder.

And Anthony's response was that kings must be allowed to do

what they need to do.

The bloodletting of Herod's in-laws isn't over.

Next, he eyes his former rival Hyrcanus II

who has returned to Judea.

Mariamne's Grandfather, Hyrcanus,

was also accused of treachery

and also put to death.

This is a man operating in survival mode.

It's a man who has long ago learned

to completely suppress his emotions.

And the killing doesn't end there.

If threatened, he will do whatever is necessary

to obliterate that threat,

even if that means killing his own family.

To be close to Herod meant being close

to the axe of his executioner.

Herod's Hasmonean wife Mariamne is racked with grief.

Her brother and now her grandfather have been murdered

at the hands of her husband.

Now, having learnt of Herod's plans to have her killed

in the event of his death, Mariamne gives Herod the cold shoulder.

Herod eventually starts to worry

that his wife, Mariamne,

is plotting against him. And it's possible that she was.

When Herod hears that his beloved wife, Mariamne

is potentially plotting against him,

this will have triggered the pervasive sense of paranoia,

his survival instincts.

The insecure king hauls his beloved wife before the courts.

She was accused of treason,

of obtaining under the guise of a love potion for Herod,

what was actually poison.

We have no idea whether that was true or not.

The accusation was treason as well as adultery.

And we don't know who the adultery would have been with.

Was it a manufactured charge against Mariamne?

This is impossible to tell.

And there's an unexpected twist in the courtroom.

Mariamne's mother who had supported her all the way down

to this point in 29 BCE,

so eight years of marriage to Herod

which had been pretty tempestuous,

Mariamne's mother Alexandra switched sides

and accused her of treason.

Exactly what Herod was accusing her of.

And so he has her executed.

But the killer king is not done yet.

Mariamne's mother was also accused of treachery

and put to death.

After Herod has Mariamne executed,

he falls into a prolonged state of deep grief and mourning.

He will do whatever it takes

even if it means causing himself considerable unbearable pain.

His survival instincts trump all.

Herod soon recovers from his malaise

and with most of his rival Hasmoneans now out of the way

the King embarks on a huge-scale building programme

to cement his Herodian legacy.

He was a remarkable builder.

It's not just that there were so many of them,

but they were done in a really impressive,

monumental style.

Most monumental of the lot is the temple in Jerusalem.

Situated on the Temple Mount,

the holiest site of Judaism where the first temple stood

centuries earlier, built by Solomon himself

the Israelite King and son of David.

Herod improved and expanded the second temple in Jerusalem,

turning it into one of the greatest wonders in the ancient world.

It was a mammoth structure built out of limestone, covered in gold.

Remnants of the Western Wall of Herod's temple

remain a place of pilgrimage to this day.

it is a great new central shrine for the Jews,

rebuilt far more impressively

than it had been under his predecessors, the Hasmoneans

It is through building that Herod seeks to reinforce

his legacy and shows his obedience to Rome.

Herod transformed Judea with,

in some cases quite specifically Roman buildings.

So, the great port, port of Caesarea which allowed trade

to come in to Judea across the Mediterranean,

which is now a major trading route from all over the Roman world.

It kept Herod in power.

It kept things stable. It kept Rome at bay.

And Herod's sweeping changes also herald

a new prosperous era for his subjects.

He engaged in these very large infrastructure projects,

aqueducts, which would bring clean water.

So, the rule of Herod, I think, it was mixed.

There were people who, of course, judged him

for being a Jewish convert.

But Herod didn't reign with terror.

Herod was a deft politician.

Many of his subjects profited from living under him.

And he grew the kingdom back to the larger size that it had been

under the Hasmonean's and he did this

through clever politicking, not through conquest.

He was basically given more land by the Romans,

who were the ultimate ruling power in the region at the time.

As he reaches his sixties the wheeler dealer Herod

becomes less sure-footed in his obeyance to almighty Rome.

In 9 BCE he makes a major miscalculation.

He was very proud of himself as a military man.

Rather astonishingly, when he's in his 60s,

he appears to have gone on campaign himself.

The southern border of Judea is being raided

by the Nabateans in present-day Jordan.

Without consulting the Roman Emperor Augustus,

Herod invades and crushes the opposition.

He was severely reprimanded by Augustus

and nearly lost all authority in Judea

for going on a foreign campaign...

...without authority from the Roman emperor.

We're told that Herod contemplated suicide.

Increasingly frail, Herod's paranoia

reaches another level.

The cloud of his suspicions now surrounds the two sons he had

with his second wife Mariamne. Aristobulus and Alexander.

These sons were assumed by the Romans

as the most plausible heirs

to his rule when Herod should die.

They had more right to rule than their father

because they came from the previous ruling dynasty.

And they were accused by Herod of plotting against him.

Both sons are imprisoned pending trial.

In a whole series of trials in front of Roman magistrates,

including the emperor himself,

in which Herod was indeed involved,

he was demonstrating quite how horrified he was

that his sons should be plotting against him.

How dare they?

He has his two sons executed.

Thus cutting off the Hasmonean line

that could challenge him for his position of power.

The psychology of Herod is such that if threatened,

his reaction will be to do whatever is necessary

to remove that threat.

Even if that means killing his own offspring.

We are told that Augustus

who was the emperor in Rome at the time said of Herod

that he'd rather be his pig than his son.

Herod maintains Jewish dietary laws.

Pigs would have lived a happy life without being slaughtered.

Herod's sons? Not so much.

I understand why he did it, logically, there was a concern

of a plot against him,

and it's quite probable that that was a real thing.

Herod's everlasting notoriety

is still to reach new heights,

with the tale of the alleged infamous slaughter

at the end of his reign.

Is the story likely to be true?

If Herod was sufficiently concerned about any possibility

of opposition to him, anything is possible.

The frail and insecure Herod edges towards 70.

It is at this point that the New Testament alleges

his final murderous act;

one for which he becomes most infamous throughout the ages.

Within the Christian world.

Herod has been best known for the massacre of the innocents

as described in the Gospel of Matthew.

On hearing of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem,

the so-called King of the Jews, Herod, according to Matthew,

orders the slaughter of all the town's infants under the age of two.

Most Christians have always engaged with Herod

through that narrative.

And it's characterised solely by paranoia and tyrannical behaviour.

This sweeping brutality against boys under the age of two

whether true or not, tells us that he is seen as somebody

who is capable of anything.

He's somebody who's held in considerable fear

and whose responses and acts have given him a reputation,

which means that nothing is seen as impossible with Herod.

But does Herod deserve a bad reputation,

one of biblical proportions?

Many historians say the evidence simply doesn't stack up.

It's unlikely that this event ever happened

and we can say that for one main reason.

The vast majority of the information that we have about Herod

comes to us from the Jewish historian Josephus.

And no reference to the massacre is found

in Josephus' accounts written in the 1st century

and closest to Herod's lifetime.

Josephus fills his record with many ill deeds that Herod had done.

Josephus was no fan of Herod's,

so it's highly unlikely that he would have avoided including

such a story had Herod actually committed that act.

is more evidence to suggest that this lurid description

was Christian propaganda rather than historical fact.

The story of the massacre of the innocents

is totally missing from the later Jewish traditions.

And I think we can say how deeply implausible it is

that Herod at the very end of his life, coming up to 70...

A baby takes time to be a threat.

They won't be a threat to Herod because he's not going to be there

by the time a baby grows up

We know that he committed some violent acts

in order to secure succession.

But it's a little bit of a stretch

that he would have been concerned about an infant being born

at this point in his life.

The story is, of course, possible, but not very likely.

So how does the infamous King of the Jews acquire his status

as a child-killer?

It is likely that the widespread publicity

given to the execution of his sons around the Roman world,

which was sort of the affair of tabloids,

everybody would know about them.

And they were remembered that these were terrible things

that Herod had done to his own family.

And therefore, he's the kind of person to whom

such a reputation could be attached.

Or was the inspiration

the battle young Herod waged in Bethlehem

on his road to being anointed king?

The battle in which Herod was victorious,

that occurred around the year 40 BCE just outside Bethlehem

would have resulted in the deaths of many of Bethlehem's young men.

This was retained in memory in a form

and became sort of folded into the narrative

that Matthew was crafting

of mass execution and acts of violence.

Whether Herod's massacre of the innocents is truth

or fiction - almost certainly the latter -

there's little doubt about his final infamous act.

Despite having married nine times,

the frail king has now reconciled with his first wife Doris

and his firstborn Antipater.

Herod invited first Antipater back

and then through Antipater, Antipater's mother Doris was allowed

to come back to court.

But like many of Herod's relatives

the rapprochement doesn't last.

in the end, Doris and Antipater

were both accused of plotting against Herod.

Antipater was kept in chains,

and again, followed long discussions with the emperor in Rome

by Augustus as to what was the best way to deal with a disloyal son.

And the answer from the emperor eventually was Herod should do

what he wished as a king and as a father.

Not easy.

As Antipater languishes in jail,

the sickly king is going through his own torment,

due to the agonies of his physical infirmities.

Herod was lying very ill.

There was a great cry through the palace in Jericho.

Because Herod had tried to stab himself...

...with the knife that he was using to peel an apple

because he was in such great pain.

And he was just stopped from committing suicide.

Antipater believes the scream is his father's last sound.

Antipater thought that's great and asked his jailers to let him out.

We know that Herod hears that his firstborn son in prison

is plotting against him.

Then when Herod got to know that he said that's one step too far.

and Antipater was put to death.

His whole life Herod has existed, Herod has survived,

to the extent that he destroys, that he obliterates,

those plotting against him. So here we see him

prepared to do that, even to his firstborn son,

I think, as a last desperate attempt

to hold onto his life, his strength, his position.

The grief-stricken Herod remains in agony on his deathbed.

But even from there it's said that he attempts

one final masterstroke to boost his PR.

He puts top-ranking Jews in jail.

The story was that Herod wanted his sister and her husband

to put all these leading Jews to death

so that even if his subjects did not cry,

did not mourn when he died,

at least they'd be crying for somebody else.

That was the story.

And then Herod dies.

Josephus tells us that he died a gruesome death

of multiple illnesses. He was not a well man.

And all these Jews who were in the Hippodrome in Jericho were let free.

We have no idea whether an unrealised project

was actually really intended or was rumoured.

And again, the significance is that the rumour was there.

People said that they could imagine it as the kind of thing

that Herod might have done.

Herod's Kingdom is divided up amongst his remaining family.

But the region soon misses the iron grip of its former leader.

What is certain is that his methods of ruling

kept the peace in Judea

from 37 BCE down to 4 BCE.

So that's 33 years, and that when he died

the whole of his kingdom erupted

into a series of different uprisings.

Different groups rose up in rebellion against his sons

immediately after his death.

The repression was effective.

So was Herod a strong ruler

or just an out-of-control Tyrant?

How will the sands of time treat this Killer King's legacy?

We know that he tried to sit between the Jewish people

and the Roman Empire.

All of this will have meant that he became somebody

forever looking over his shoulder, somebody who learned to live

entirely on his survival instincts

Some Jews thought that Herod had done rather well

at negotiating the relationship between the people he was meant

to be ruling over and the wider government of Rome.

There were other Jews who thought that he was clearly a traitor

because he'd been far too Roman.

And the judgement as to whether he's a good thing or a bad thing

swung back and forth.

He was a very skilful politician

and I think he deserves a lot of respect

for what he was able to achieve at that time for his people.

And what of the brutality he meted out to so many subjects

and to his own family?

The things that he did are immoral

but we cannot look at Herod in a vacuum.

He needs to be understood in his own context.

He was very concerned about his own position during his own lifetime,

but so were many kings and many rulers,

in many different time periods.

So the actions he took, I don't think,

put him on the fringes of history by any means.

Although Herod's thinking processes are utterly logical,

strategic, I think this is a man driven

by such a profound fear and paranoia

as to almost render him insane.

He clearly is a killer King,

he had many, many enemies and they remembered him

as a wicked king because of the way in which

he dealt with his political opponents.

But in 1st century BCE,

it would be wrong to think of the amount of violence that he used

as being particularly unusual.

What is different about Herod

and gave rise to his later reputation

was the publicity surrounding these judicial executions,

in particular those of his sons.

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