=3. Herod as Husband.=――Delighted with his success, Herod reached his palace, hoping to receive from his wife the sympathy which would be most welcome of all. He was disappointed. To further his ‘desire,’ Antipater had, as we know, married his son to the young Asmonean princess. It was a diplomatic marriage, which did not turn out a success. Mariamne, if she had any feeling for her race, could scarcely be expected to feel any love for the man who had planned and profited by its downfall. Herod, to do him justice, did love her in his way. But it was not a nice way. He was jealous and mistrustful. Both times, before he set out for Rome, he left secret orders that, if accident befell him, she was not to survive. The secret leaked out. Mariamne was no patient Hindoo wife to submit to involuntary suttee. She was a proud and passionate princess, and she did not care for her husband. She never wanted his love, and she was bitterly indignant at these crooked proofs of it. There were thus no bright congratulations to greet Herod on his return, but the coldest, angriest reproaches. And there was a mischief-maker at court, a certain Salome, a sister of Herod’s, to make matters worse between the royal couple. Salome hinted that the informer, who had told Mariamne of the secret compact, was a great admirer of the beautiful queen. It was altogether a most miserable home-coming, and Herod, between his love, and his suspicion, and his ambition, and his disappointment, was half mad. Perhaps wholly so, for the time, for in his fury he ordered the execution, first of the informer, and then of Mariamne herself. At this point in his career one pities Herod. His remorse was deep, and more lasting than his rage. =4. Herod as Father.=――In this relation, too, he failed. ‘On the whole, I had sooner be Herod’s swine than Herod’s son,’ said the Roman Emperor Augustus, and Augustus was Herod’s friend! Poor Mariamne had quite a little regiment of successors, none of them loved so deeply, and none treated quite so brutally as she had been; but these eight, some say ten, successors gave rise between them to endless quarrels and conspiracies in the palace. Herod feared, or was led to fear by one or other of the later wives, that two boys of his, who had called Mariamne mother, would one day avenge her death. So these two sons were executed. Another son, Antipater, was more than once in danger from this extraordinary father’s suspicions, and in the end, and only five days before his own death, Herod had him also killed.