DAMASCUS UNDER HARETH

HARETH was the father–in–law of Herod Antipas, and from the day when the weakness of that miserable prince had beguiled him into his connexion, at once adulterous and incestuous, with Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, Hareth had been the implacable foe of the Tetrarch of Galilee. Their quarrel had ended in a battle, in which the troops of Hareth won a signal victory. After this defeat, in which the Jews saw a retribution for the murder of John the Baptist,1 Antipas applied to the Emperor Tiberius, who sent Vitellius to chastise the audacious Emir who had dared to defeat an ally of Rome. But when Vitellius had reached Jerusalem, he heard the news of the death of Tiberius. The death of a Roman emperor often involved so immense a change of policy, that Vitellius did not venture, without fresh instructions, to renew the war. The details of what followed have not been preserved. That Hareth ventured to seize Damascus is improbable. Vitellius was too vigorous a legate, and the Arab had too wholesome a dread of imperial Rome, to venture on so daring an act of rebellion.2 On the other hand, it is not impossible that the Emperor Gaius— who was fond of distributing kingdoms among princes whom he favoured, and whose mind was poisoned against Antipas by his friend and minion Agrippa I.—should have given back to Hareth a town which in old days had belonged to the Nabathæan dynasty.3 The conjecture receives some independent confirmation. Coins of Damascus are found which bear the image of Augustus, of Tiberius, and again of Nero, but none which bear that of Gaius or of Claudius. This would lead us to infer that during these reigns Damascus was subject to a local sway.4