The Herods: Murder, Politics, and the Art of Succession by Bruce Chilton

Author:Bruce Chilton [Chilton, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Religion, General, Ancient, History, REL006040 Religion / Biblical Biography / New Testament, Biblical Biography, New Testament, HIS002000 History / Ancient / General, REL033000 Religion / History
ISBN: 9781506474281
Google: 664xEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Augsburg
Published: 2021-08-03T20:46:40+00:00

The Claudian Settlement and Agrippa’s Glory

Led by a tribune of the Praetorian Guard named Chaera, a conspiracy succeeded in cutting Caligula down as he made his way to observe the Palatine games.47 According to Suetonius, his corpse bore more than thirty wounds. Caligula’s death was hailed as providential at the time and long thereafter. By a combination of Petronius’s daring, Chaera’s fortitude, and Agrippa’s diplomacy, the tyrant had been stopped, and the temple had been saved. The assassination threw Roman politics into chaos, but the definitive annulment of Caligula’s plans produced a realignment in Judean politics, reprieved Petronius, and produced a stunning opportunity for Agrippa by means of the enhancement of his prestige.

For Agrippa to master the new alignment of power in relation to Judea and his region, he needed to involve himself in the deadly politics of Rome; the clash of interests was now so fraught that the Principate itself, the legal instrument that gave the emperor his power, looked to be collapsing. Factions of the Senate took advantage of the situation, some exhorting their colleagues to seize the moment as an occasion to secure freedom against the tyranny that had taken control of Rome since the time of Julius Caesar and return to a republican model of governance.48 Others advocated the extermination of Caligula’s wider family and supporters; his wife and daughter had already been summarily put to the sword.49 The dead emperor’s uncle, named Claudius, hid away in the palace, only to be taken into custody by soldiers.

Ill with a neurological condition since his birth, frustrated in repeated quests for office that he ventured, Claudius had long submerged himself in study, becoming a noted scholar of Greek. He was not up to the occasion that confronted him. The soldiers had seized him, Claudius feared, in order to kill him. But an officer of the palace guard, Gratus, used the military custody of Claudius as a form of safekeeping to assert that Claudius should be named as emperor.50 The Senate and the army seemed to be at odds.

In the past, standoffs between the senators of the Republic, endowed with the supreme authority of Rome, and the generals of the soldiery, possessed of spectacular force, allowed the will of emperors to prevail over divisions that also pitted faction against faction, army against army. Now the sudden killing of Caligula left the army confused; the Senate for its part was also far from united. Claudius’s vacillation only compounded political confusion.51 Into this turbulence King Agrippa stepped with the astonishing assurance that marked the best of the Herodians at their peak. Caligula’s murder might easily have meant that Agrippa’s whole house of cards would tumble down. But far from his own assigned territory yet well connected at Rome, this luckiest and wiliest of all the Herodians proved a friend of Claudius as much as he had been to Caligula, and he helped the new emperor secure power.

Agrippa showed such attention to mourning Caligula as was expected but then forced his way in to see Claudius when he learned that he had been taken into custody.

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