Yet all these things were performed in a manner and style so foreign to the peculiar genius of the Jewish mind, that, proud as they were of their country, they were by these means more and more alienated from the king. He saw this, and laboured to stem the torrent of public feeling. At one time he wished to introduce an oath of allegiance; but it was so strenuously opposed by the most eminent Jewish doctors, that he was compelled to lay it aside. He then remitted a part of the taxes, professedly on account of several national calamities which had recently fallen upon the country, but really to bid for popular favour: this also was vain. One other course was open to him; and he pursued it. The temple, as then existing, was unworthy of the nation and of the improved state of Jerusalem: he proposed to rebuild it; but so distrustful were the people of his promise and of his religion, that they would not have the old one removed until they saw the materials collected for the new building. After two years of preparation, the old edifice was taken down in parts, as the new one was raised. The holy place was finished in eighteen months, the body of the structure in eight years. This building was erected in the Greek style of architecture, and of the most costly and beautiful marble and other material; and the great work appears to some extent to have produced a better state of feeling between the Jews and their king. Yet, during all these works, Herod’s domestic course was one of continued misery and crime. As if the blood through which he had waded to the throne, and the numerous victims which in these times of turbulence and war were sacrificed to his ambition, were not sufficient to satiate his sanguinary nature, his lovely wife Mariamne, after having borne him two sons, was doomed by his order to perish on the scaffold, the victim of the most groundless jealousy and cruel conspiracy. He endeavoured to bury this crime in oblivion by other marriages, but in vain. Intense suspicion haunted all his thoughts; a morbid apprehension of evil destroyed every acquisition, and turned all the members of his family into foes. Under this influence, after years of disquiet, he condemned his two sons by Mariamne to death. It were useless to attempt the history of this family at greater length. Herod married ten wives, eight of whom bore him children. This was not the least amongst the causes of his domestic misery.[d] [Sidenote: [4 B.C.]] Herod willed his dominion to his two sons, Herod Antipas and Archelaus, and after some delay they entered into their inheritance. Archelaus was ethnarch over Samaria, Judea, and Idumæa, which he misgoverned so grossly that the exasperated Jews complained to Rome (6 A.D.). Augustus deposed and banished his faithless servant, putting a procurator over the dominions.[a] [Illustration: SEBASTE, IN SAMARIA] CHAPTER XII. THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY A CRITICAL VIEW OF CHRIST AND OTHER MESSIAHS