Professor Benedict Eckhardt

one, Antipater, the father, has been very, very helpful as an ally to the Romans.

Two, Herod has also shown his own goodwill to the Romans in a variety of ways.

And three, Antigonus is a problem and the Parthians are a problem.

And thus suddenly, Herod is named king of Judea in Rome in 40 BCE.

And this is really a Roman installation.

This has nothing to do with the native rulers, the native dynasty in Judea.

This is Rome deciding and declaring that Herod will be king.

Herod being named king by the Roman Senate is a complete game changer, because suddenly he is not only a very good ally to the Romans, energetic, powerful in his local region, he has now been given this title.

And it makes him even more dependent on the Romans than he ever had been before in some ways, because this is completely divorced from native power structures in Judea.

It is an imperial power saying, you will be king of this particular region.

Herod's Rise is absolutely extraordinary.

It's eventful, it has everything.

It has battles, it has family deaths, it has murders.

It does also, in an odd way, conform to some narratives that we find in antiquity more broadly about the rise of a tyrant, for example, that you have this very, very promising figure who as a youth is energetic, go-getting, gets everything done.

Against all the odds, this outsider normally wins the throne or comes to prominence, and that's when things start to go wrong.

I think most people remember Herod today or know Herod today as essentially the baby killer.

Thinking about the New Testament tradition and the massacre of the innocents remains the one go-to idea that people have if they hear the name Herod.

Whether it should or not is another question.

And we certainly can't reduce historical figures, Herod's included, to goodies and baddies and that's it.

So we can think about his achievements and the rise is quite extraordinary.