The description of the Temple is followed by a glowing account of the king's palace, of which the roof was "according to the Corinthian order, and the decorations so vivid that the leaves seemed to be in motion." We are told, too, of the great cities which the king built, Tadmor in the wilderness of Syria, and Gezer, the Bible narrative being supplemented here with passages from Nicholas. The Queen of Sheba is represented as the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia, and it is to her gift that Josephus attributes "the root of balsam which our country still bears." Reveling in the material greatness of the Jewish court during the golden age of the old kingdom, Josephus catalogues the wealth of Solomon, the number of his horses and chariots. He reproaches him not only for marrying foreign wives, but for making images of brazen oxen, which supported the brazen sea, and the images of lions about his throne. For these sins against the second commandment he died ingloriously. With the death of Solomon the legendary and romancing character of this part of the _Antiquities_ comes to an end. In the summary of the fortunes of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Josephus adheres almost exclusively to the Biblical text, and allows himself few digressions. He moralizes a little about the decay of the people under Rehoboam, reflecting that the aggrandizement of a kingdom and its sudden attainment of prosperity often are the occasion of mischief; and he controverts Herodotus, who confused Sesostris with Shishak when relating the Egyptian king's conquests. It is, he claims, really Shishak's invasion of Jerusalem which the Greek historian narrates, as is proved by the fact that he speaks of circumcised Syrians, who can be no other than Jews. The fate of Omri and Zimri[1] moves him to moralize again about God's Providence in rewarding the good and punishing the wicked; and Ahab's death evokes some platitudes concerning fate, "which creeps on human souls and flatters them with pleasing hopes, till it brings them to the place where it will be too hard for them."[2] Artapanus, or one of the Jewish Hellenists masking as a pagan historian, may have provided him with this reflection. [Footnote 1: Ant. IX. xii. 6.] [Footnote 2: Ant. IX. xv. 6.]