They were at civil war with one another for the better part of 300 years with different powers intervening at different points. It's like no ruler could leave for two seconds without a revolt breaking out. They could barely stay either for fear of being poisoned by their families.
Posted 7/4/2012 8:28 am
It's a damn fine line he had to walk not to offend the Romans who paid him to write those books while being highly partisan.
"and the entire Roman cohorts were destroyed; for these cohorts were new-raised men, gathered out of Syria, and here was no mixture of those called veteran soldiers among them, who might have supported those that were unskillful in war."
He has to go out of his way to mention some mitigating factor whenever the Romans lose.
Clearly if they had been Italian veterans they would have won.
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Posted 7/4/2012 8:33 am
Everything he did was pure schlomo, from his military tactics to his backstabbing his own people to his worming in to the winning circles to lay his eggs.
Herod's chosen men ventured to get upon the wall, and fell into the city, as did Sosius's centurions after them; and now they first of all seized upon what was about the temple; and upon the pouring in of the army, there was slaughter of vast multitudes every where, by reason of the rage the Romans were in at the length of this siege, and by reason that the Jews who were about Herod earnestly endeavored that none of their adversaries might remain; so they were cut to pieces by great multitudes, as they were crowded together in narrow streets, and in houses, or were running away to the temple; nor was there any mercy showed either to infants, or to the aged, or to the weaker sex; insomuch that although the king sent about and desired them to spare the people, nobody could be persuaded to withhold their right hand from slaughter, but they slew people of all ages, like madmen.
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It's obviously a Christian painting of Herod the Great. Christians hate him for killing John the Baptist and probably some other stuff I'm going to be reading about in Wars later on.
The story in Matthew about Herod trying to kill the baby Jesus is probably the inspiration for making him look like Schlomo, but that story is utter bullshit.
thanks, I am oblivious to this and I know that sounds like I am really uneducated lol. my parents were both roman catholic but for some reason never spoke of church, the bible or religion in our house and left it up to us to see if we wanted to discover it.
According to the book of Matthew and nowhere else, Herod rounded up babies in the area of Bethlehem to kill them all. Of course our hero's parents got away and went to Egypt according to Matthew.
Luke says they strolled down the 10 miles to Jerusalem where Herod reigned supreme and went to dedicate Jesus at the temple.
They walked on past the people looking for babies into Jerusalem into the temple where Herod's appointed High Priest ruled to dedicate a baby just born in a place where Herod was looking for male babies to kill.
After that they escape to Egypt to escape from Herod who Joseph knew was looking for them.
Posted 7/4/2012 9:25 pm
I do believe that Herod was inspired to initiate the massacre by the appearance of the Magi, the three wise men who had used astrology to predict Christ's coming as king. Thus they tipped off the paranoid Herod and inadvertently inspired him to try to eliminate any rivals...
Posted 7/4/2012 10:18 pm
Herod: And do not you disturb yourselves at the quaking of inanimate creatures, nor do you imagine that this earthquake is a sign of another calamity; for such affections of the elements are according to the course of nature, nor does it import any thing further to men, than what mischief it does immediately of itself.
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FAGGOT! IT'S A SIGN FROM GOD! HE IS ANGRY WITH US!
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