lieved to be done, and
easily might be believed to have been done, because they were of such
a nature as to be usually done by young men, and by such as, out of a
desire of ruling, seize upon the government too soon. He also charged
him with his neglect of the funeral mourning for his father, and with
having merry meetings the very night in which he died; and that it
was thence the multitude took the handle of raising a tumult: and if
Archelaus could thus requite his dead father, who had bestowed
such benefits upon him, and bequeathed such great things to him, by
pretending to shed tears for him in the day time, like an actor on the
stage, but every night making mirth for having gotten the government,
he would appear to be the same Archelaus with regard to Caesar, if he
granted him the kingdom, which he hath been to his father; since he had
then dancing and singing, as though an enemy of his were fallen, and not
as though a man were carried to his funeral, that was so nearly related,
and had been so great a benefactor to him. But he said that the greatest
crime of all was this, that he came now before Caesar to obtain the
government by his grant, while he had before acted in all things as he
could have acted if Caesar himself, who ruled all, had fixed him firmly
in the government. And what he most aggravated in his pleading was the
slaughter of those about the temple, and the impiety of it, as done at
the festival; and how they were slain like sacrifices themselves, some
of whom were foreigners, and others of their own country, till the
temple was full of dead bodies: and all this was done, not by an alien,
but by one who pretended to the lawful title of a king, that he might
complete the wicked tyranny which his nature prompted him to, and
which is hated by all men. On which account his father never so much
as dreamed of making him his successor in the kingdom, when he was of a
sound mind, because he knew his disposition; and in his former and more
authentic testament, he appointed his antagonist Antipas to succeed; but
that Archelaus was called by his father to that dignity when he was in a
dying condition, both of body and mind; while Antipas was called when
he was ripest in his judgment, and of such strength of body as made
him capable of managing his own affairs: and if his father had the like
notion of him formerly that he hath now showed, yet hath he given a
sufficient specimen what a king he is likely to be, when