With this passage we reach the N.T. period. The grim story of an intended massacre, happily in this case averted, affords a parallel to the Gospel story of the murder of the innocents.
4 B. C. Now, although his sufferings seemed beyond human endurance, he did not despair of recovery. He sent for physicians, and consented to try every remedy which they prescribed. He crossed over the river Jordan, and surrendered himself to treatment in the hot springs at Callirrhoe. These waters, besides their general remedial properties, are fit to drink; they debouch into the so-called Bituminous[1] Lake. Here, the physicians deciding that a higher temperature was needed, he was placed in a vat of oil. To this treatment he appeared to have succumbed, but when his attendants fell to lamentation, he rallied, and now abandoning all hope of recovery, gave orders that every soldier should be paid fifty pieces of silver;[2] he made further large bequests to their commanding officers and to his personal friends. Returning to Jericho, he had an attack of black bile, which rendered him so savage with all the world[3] that, although now nearing his end, he contrived the scheme which I proceed to describe.
By his orders, the principal men from every quarter of the entire Jewish nation waited upon him. They came in large numbers, as the summons was to the nation and was universally obeyed, death being the penalty for disregard of the injunctions. For the king was mad with rage against all alike, whether innocent or suspected of guilt. He then locked them all up in the hippodrome, and sent for his sister Salome and her husband Alexas.
