Page:Historical Works of Venerable Bede vol. 2.djvu/327

 CHRONICLE.] A.M. 3910 [5258].

Upwards of seventy Roman senators and knights having conspired against Caesar on account of his overbearing-conduct, he was stabbed to death in the senate-house four years and six months from the commencement of his reign. Cassius conquers Judæa and spoils the temple.

A.M. 3966 [5314].

Octavianus Caesar Augustus, the second of the Roman princes, from whom all his successors assumed the title of Augustus, reigned 56 years and 6 months; 15 in Cleopatra's lifetime, and 41 after her death. In the eleventh year of Augustus, on the Jewish priesthood becomino; vacant, Herod, an entire stranger, whose Herod father, Antipater, was a native of Ascalon, and his mother, Cypris, an Arabian, was made king by the Romans. He reigned 36 years; and that his ignoble and foreign extraction might not be known, he burned all the books in which the lineage of the Jewish nobility was registered in the temple; that, by the suppression of the proofs to the contrary, he might himself be deemed to have belonged to it. Moreover, that his own offspring might partake of the royal blood, he put away Dosis, a woman of Jerusalem, whom he had married when in a private station, together with his son Antipater, whom he had gotten by her, and took to wife Marianne, daughter of Alexander, and grand-daughter of Aristobulus, the brother of Hyrcanus, his predecessor. By her he had five sons, two of whom, Aristobulus and Alexander, he put to death in Samaria; and not long after their mother also, whom he passionately loved. Of these sons, Aristobulus had, by Berenice, a son, Herod, who, we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was smitten by an Angel. A third war having arisen between Augustus and Antony, because the latter, who had and the East, had put away the sister of Augustus and married Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra are