As monarch of a kingdom now considerably extended through
favour of Rome and by his own conquests^ the productive re-
sources and taxes of which he indeed stretched to the uttermost,
Herod was enabled to display a pomp and sumptuousness that
must have astonished even the Romans. By the nation he was
deeply hated as an Idumean and usurper, the murderer of the
Asmonean house, and the executioner of so many thousands, in-
cluding the best and most zealous observers of the law amongst
the Jews. They beheld with the deepest sorrow the national
kingdom polluted by this blood-stained tyrant of foreign origin,
who bent subserviently before each successive Roman general and
potentate, and the profanation of the high-priesthood, the bearers
of which dignity he invested and deprived of it according to his
fancy, and converted into mere tools of his caprice or his in-
terest. But the people were tired and exhausted by the preced-
ing thirty years of confusion and civil war, and their power of
resistance was broken down. There were, indeed, plenty of
conspiracies and desperate attempts; but the good fortune and
prudence of Herod weathered all dangers, and each time he took
a terrible revenge, so that the hatred of him was coupled with an
equal proportion of fear and desponding belief in his lucky star.
Accordingly they now put up with many heathen innovations
which had kindled the desperate struggle of the Maccabees a
century and a half ago, and this although the Hellenistic party
amongst the people had much decreased, and the unanimous sen-
timent of abhorrence for every thing heathen had grown far more
strong and general throughout the nation than it was then.
