01x04 - What k*lled Herod?

[bunniefuu]

[music]

I'm going on an adventure.

There's only one way to figure it all out.

Unzip the archeology. Make it naked.

[music]

[MAN SINGING]The worms crawl in...

...and the worms crawl out.

Your brains come tumbling down your snout.

Be merry my friends be merry.

[SIMCHA] Herod the Great cast one of the darkest shadows...

...of the Christian Bible.

He was the King of Judea...

...and he tried to k*ll the infant Jesus.

According to the gospel of Matthew,

it was he who ordered the slaughter of the innocents.

The attempt to k*ll Jesus by k*lling all the babies...

...in Bethlehem.

And then, two years later nearing the age of ,

death caught up with him.

But even if you believe in divine retribution...

...Herod's end was particularly nasty.

His people couldn't wait to be rid of him.

But even more impatient were the worms.

While the king watched,

they wriggled out of his genitalia.

[SIMCHA] The Bible paints Herod the Great...

...as the Great Villain.

History indicts him for countless murders...

...and political assassinations.

As villains go, his worm-ridden death...

...was deliciously disgusting.

But for over two thousand years...

...the actual disease that dethroned Herod...

...has remained a mystery.

What k*lled Herod?

The answer to that mystery might hold the key..

...to explaining part of the savagery of Herod the Great.

After all, worms in your "willie"...

....might put you in a bad mood as well.

Would you think I'm a wimp if I closed my eyes?

Okay. Not looking, not looking.

Okay, maybe we can switch this one.

[SIMCHA] Dr. Jan Hirschmann...

...from the University of Washington...

...school of Medicine in Seattle.

He studied the descriptions of Herod's final days...

...written by first century historian Josephus.

Hirschmann tried to diagnose Herod...

...two thousand years after his death.

He said he was itching all over his body.

He said that he had breathlessness...

...that was particularly worse when he lay down,

also associated with a racking cough.

And a foul breath.

Okay, I'll just change to the next one.

[SIMCHA] To learn more about our patient,

I travelled to Caesaria;

an entire port city built by Herod.

At the time of Jesus...

...it was one of the greatest ports in the world.

People still come from all around to tour the site.

Before he was Herod the Great villain,

he was Herod the Great builder.

In fact, one of the greatest builders...

...the ancient world ever saw.

Okay y'all. Welcome to Caesaria.

Ancient Caesaria.

The planned city built by none other than-

Come on, who was it built by?

Herod. Herod the Great.

Maybe we can run this little tour together.

Okay, Herod the Great...

...who built lots of things all over Israel,

including the expanded beautified second temple, right.

So he built Caesaria.

Name it after Augustus Caesar, right.

His mentor.

I just want to know why are you calling him great?

He k*lled his wife. He k*lled his kids.

Why are you calling him great?

Why don't you call him crazy?

You're right. He was crazy. He was paranoid.

Like you said, he k*lled his best friend Hippochus.

He k*lled his brother Phasael.

He k*lled his favourite wife Miriam.

He k*lled Miriam's two sons...

...who were in line for the throne.

He k*lled countless high priests and all kinds of people,

anybody he thought betrayed him.

But he was basically a nice guy?

No. He was basically a paranoid crazy guy.

But the thing that was Great about him...

...is he was a great builder,

and he built lots of beautiful buildings,

cities all across the country.

So that's the reason I call him great.

[SIMCHA] He may have had his mind set...

...on building his way into history.

But most of us only know his history...

...of trying to k*ll the infant Jesus.

[SIMCHA] But what can we...

...really say about this story.

[SIMCHA] Dr. Peter Richardson,

Professor of Religion at the University of Toronto.

He's not a cross dresser.

He just likes dressing up like Herod.

As for me, well, when in Rome-

The one thing that Christians think they know...

...about Herod the Great is in that episode...

...that is always told at Christmas time.

He's k*lling all the children under two years of age...

...in Bethlehem because somebody told him...

...that a future messiah, a future king,

was born in Bethlehem.

So by getting rid of all the children,

he gets rid of a rival somewhere down the road.

That story is told to us in only one text,

the Gospel of Mathew.

I think it is an exaggeration...

...of his execution of of his own children...

...in the very same year.

[SIMCHA] Dr. Isaiah Gafni...

...of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Expert on first century Jerusalem.

You can't disprove it, you can't prove it, right?

Clearly, he did put to death those people...

...who would have been perceived by him...

...as being a challenge to his total rule over the country.

Whether that means that he k*lled the innocents...

...or the babies or what have you,

there's no way of proving.

[SIMCHA] The Biblical Herod was an old man,

already diseased and dying.

But what was he like as a young man?

In order to reach a diagnosis,

Dr. Hirschmann had to try to construct..

...a life-long medical record for Herod.

Young Herod from a physical point of view...

...was very robust. He was a warrior.

He was an athlete.

He seemed to have a very good health.

There was some chest wound...

...which apparently was a minor one,

and no other mention of any illness until his mid-forties...

...when he had some vaguely described problem...

...in which he had inflammation and pain...

...at the back of his head,

accompanied by some mental confusion.

It seemed as though it was going to be a fatal illness,

but he recovered and after that again...

...no mention of any problems physically...

...until just at the time of shortly before his death.

[SIMCHA] Herod must have been healthy...

...and strong for most of his life...

...because he survived assassination attempts,

poison plots, even a shipwreck.

You'd think that after all that a king...

...could at least come home put on slippers...

...and relax on his throne.

[singing] Oh these women have a way...

[SIMCHA] Nope.

His domestic life alone could have done many a man in.

The poor guy had to juggle ten wives.

Eunuchs, spies, poisons, plots.

The king's life was so complicated...

...you'll never keep track of it all.

Unless you're Canadian grandmaster...

...of all things Herodian.

Quick, Ron. I need info on Herod.

Then Herod hears the rumor...

...that of his eunuchs have taken bribes...

...from the son of Alexander usurp the throne.

Herod gets suspicious, sends out spies.

Soon everybody is denouncing everybody else,

it doesn't matter if you're guilty,

it doesn't matter if you're innocent,

everybody gets tortured, equally.

Romans are marching around...

...with armies all over the place.

Anthony and Cleopatra doing their thing in Egypt,

Julius Caesar doing his thing.

There's Pompeii running around,

wait a minute, Pompeii's already dead.

[laughter]

[SIMCHA] Okay. Now that that's all...

...ahem, clear. Look.

Don't try to keep it straight,

the point is to get a glimpse...

...of the pressures surrounding Herod.

Our best clues to Herod's state of mind...

...come from the archaeology.

Some people say manic building...

...has Freudian undertones.

Psyche carved into stone.

What do Herod's buildings tell us...

...about the pressure he faced?

Caught between his Roman neighbours...

...and his Jewish subjects?

[SIMCHA]This is : scale model...

...of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus...

...and Herod the Great.

Even the Romans recognize...

...that Herod had built Jerusalem...

...into one of the most beautiful cities...

...of the ancient world.

-The Romans talk about Jerusalem...

...as being the most famous city in all of the east..

...and not only of Judea.

Beginning with Herod's time,

Jerusalem was a beautiful city...

...and certainly well known to the Romans of the day.

Herod built a Roman theatre in Jerusalem...

...and this is one of many elements...

...that really changed the nature of the city.

It became much more of a Hellenistic Roman city...

...even though the temple mount...

...clearly stressed the Jewish aspect of the city.

So what we have here really is a hybrid.

On the one hand he is a Jew,

and there's no question...

...about his legitimate claim to being a Jew.

But on the other hand he's very Hemeni.

He's really part of the Greek and Roman world.

The palace with two wings to it over here,

one named after the Roman emperor,

the other after the commander...

...of the Roman armies.

He was naming the palaces after the Romans?

After Augustus the Roman Caesar.

He was sucking up to them.

Well you might call it that.

Is that historically true?

Yes. He had a very good relationship.

A very good working relationship...

...with the Roman emperors and...

...they got what they wanted out of Herod...

...which was basically law and order,

maybe in reverse sequence.

In other words, they really needed order...

...more than anything else.

Herod could supply that.

[SIMCHA] Roman lackey...

...or a master of realpolitik?

Either way, Herod's political success...

...gave him the stability...

...to pursue his passion for building.

I would say if you were writing an...

...architectural history of the first century BC...

...Herod would be right at the top of the list...

...in terms of his creativeness,

his innovationess, his brilliance.

[SIMCHA] Brilliant in life. Brilliant in death.

As I'm about to uncover...

...at the Herod family tomb.

[SIMCHA] Herod had such a reputation...

...for being a fantastic builder...

...that when anything from the first century...

...that is beautiful is found,

everybody says it must be Herod.

And when this tomb was found in the late 's,

it was so beautiful, everybody suddenly said:

"it must be the Herod's family tomb."

You can see embedded in the rock...

...here a rolling stone,

as described in the gospels...

...for the first century which would...

...block the way to this amazing tomb;

this giant courtyard over here.

So, we don't know.

Maybe it is the Herod's family tomb.

Maybe it isn't.

What we do know is if he liked you,

he treated you good even after death.

If he didn't like you or if you really got him angry,

he made sure that death came sooner,

rather than later.

And that's what happened with his beloved wife,

he k*lled her.

And that's what happened with three of his sons.

He k*lled them too.

There's a well known story...

...that Herod at one time k*lled his sons...

...whom he suspected of plotting against him...

...to which the Roman emperor Augustus said:

"better to be the pig of Herod than the son of Herod."

This by the way is a play on Greek words.

The word for pig in Greek is choiros and for son is gios.

In other words, better to be a choiros than a gios.

And so a Jew would never slaughter a pig...

...for obvious reasons,

but he might slaughter his sons.

In this case, Herod slaughtering his sons.

Did you come to any conclusions...

...about whether Herod was nasty to begin with...

...or whether he was actually a normal guy...

...until his scrotum started falling off.

He seemed to be more cruel...

...and more paranoid than he had been...

...throughout his life at the time of his illness.

I think sometimes the suffering...

...that they have undergo during their illness...

...does create problems in the way in which...

...they manage to deal with other people.

[SIMCHA] Nearing years of age...

...Herod was struck down by an illness...

...that wracked his body with pain and fierce itching.

If he wasn't mad before, this would have done the trick.

Josephus records that worms were living in his privates.

This would have been the result...

...of advanced gangrene in his privates.

Would you want to see a picture...

...of the gangrene?

You have a picture of the gangrene do you?

We're talking about penis gangrene here.

Ooh, I didn't quite-

[SIMCHA] Gangrene in his "willie" wasn't the only time...

...a member caused Herod trouble.

Family members weren't just family.

Marriages were political alliances.

Home life was a grand political game.

A game that had rules particular to Judea.

When members of the Herodian family have to marry,

let's say daughters have to marry foreign princes.

Those foreign princes are forced to circumcise themselves.

And if they don't, the marriage is cancelled.

Did they have to convert to Judaism?

Well you know it's a sort of conversion.

Other words it would be unthinkable...

...for a daughter of the Herodian court...

...to marry a prince who was not circumcised.

And he required this.

See this is the Jewish side to Herod.

He had a Jewish side.

Yes.

At the wedding did he force them to eat gefilte fish?

I was not there.

It's possible.

Yes. Can I go home?

You want to go, you don't like this line of thing?

Fretting over family foreskin wasn't his only pressure.

Trouble with his neighbour's...

...cost a few sleepless nights as well.

His Roman neighbours included Brutus, Augustus,

Mark Anthony. And to the south,

his sworn enemy, Cleopatra.

[SIMCHA] Dr. Gaby Barkay...

...is a Jerusalem archaeologist...

...familiar with the web of plot and intrigue...

...spun around Herod by Cleopatra.

She hated the guts of Herod...

...and after every night of a love affair...

...with her favourite Roman rulers,

she got as a present.

Cleopatra was very hot...

...according to history right?

I prefer Liz Taylor.

And after every night with...

...her Roman lovers she got-

She got the income of the plantations of Jericho.

Herod was afraid that slowly all his kingdom...

...will be given as a love present to this lady.

[SIMCHA] Herod outlived Cleopatra.

His building continued.

But this manic building wasn't just Freudian overcompensation.

As we're about to find out,

it wasn't just a case of my column is bigger than yours.

[SIMCHA] So was Herod's manic building...

Freudian overcompensation?

Just a case of my column...

...is bigger than yours?

According to Dr. Richardson-

[RICHARDSON] I think he was really trying to...

...stimulate the economy.

I think he was trying to do great public works...

...in order to keep everybody employed,

in order to keep money flowing,

in order to move the economy ahead.

He's a pretty smart cookie.

I mean he's playing a political role,

sucking trade to that area,

he's getting everybody building and working.

People have been prevented...

...from seeing some of those other dimensions...

...to his time as king.

-Because of his dementia?

Because of the horrible reputation that he has.

[SIMCHA] So in order to get a...

...holistic view of Herod,

we've taken a bit of a look at his family life,

his political world, all-important aspects...

...to understanding the mind and...

...mental state of our patient.

Now to get back to the purely physical symptoms,

abdominal pains, shortness of breath, and itching.

How, does Dr. Hirschmann...

...determine which is the most important symptom?

There aren't many generalized illnesses that cause itching.

And so my assumption was that itching...

...was an important part of the entire illness.

Unlike abdominal pain or shortness of breath,

for which there's dozens and dozens of possibilities.

[SIMCHA] The itching may be the most important symptom...

...from a medical point of view.

But lets be honest.

We really want to know where the worms in the willie came from.

Well this is Hirshmann's theory:

Itching led to scratching. That introduced bacteria.

And that infection led to gangrene.

A prime breeding ground for maggots.

What's that?

Those little white portions...

...are the actual maggots themselves.

They're basically flies, right?

-They're flies.

I just want to understand.

You're saying that Herod would have got gangrene in his penis,

and then as the tissue d*ed,

flies were laying their eggs in his penis.

In the dead area of the skin, dead tissue.

It seems like divine retribution here. Big time.

[SIMCHA] Now it's not enough...

...to know how Herod behaved.

We need the context of...

...how other people got along in Herod's days.

After all, we judge our behaviours...

...in comparison to others.

If you would see Herod in the context of history.

If you would look at the court of his friend Augustus in Rome.

Augustus' mother Livia actually k*lled everybody...

...who would have been a thr*at...

...or even possibly getting to a position...

...that would make him or her dangerous politically.

So she would k*ll everybody surrounding her.

So compared to Livia Herod's a good guy?

These murders were part of the spirit of the period.

But the Christian bible says he's cruel.

Yup.

The rabbinic literature says he's cruel.

-But don't forget that the rabbis admitted that...

...he who didn't see Herod's building...

...didn't see a magnificent building in his lifetime.

-Yeah, I mean does that get you off the hook?

You build nice buildings you can k*ll your kids?

Look, he was a king of the st century BC...

...and we ought not to forget that.

You cannot judge a king of st century BC...

...with the standards of the th or st century AD.

That would be impossible.

[SIMCHA] Over the centuries...

...many believed God judged Herod...

...and the worms were divine retribution.

What we do know is that his illness became so bad...

...he took desperate measures to escape it.

He given a Kn*fe to pare an apple...

...and he tried to s*ab himself.

But he was prevented from k*lling himself...

...by one of his attendants.

And therefore lived a little bit longer.

[SIMCHA] His subjects couldn't wait for his death.

But what they didn't know...

...was that after his death things would fall apart.

Within years the country disintegrated into civil w*r.

The Roman's b*rned Jerusalem.

Herod's reign marked the height...

...of fabled Jerusalem's beauty and fame.

But what k*lled Herod?

Diagnosis would be is that he had chronic kidney disease...

...and that seemed to be the single disease situation...

...that explained all the other problems that he had.

The shortness of breath, the abdominal pain, the itching.

Herod needed dialysis?

Yes, I think that's probably right.

Had he had a dialysis machine,

he could have lived to k*ll again.

Or had a transplant, I suppose.

Although he's pretty old for that.

He was sixty-nine at the time of his death.

Following his death in Jericho...

...he was buried at Herodium with a funeral ceremony.

Which was most probably one of the most...

...fancy funeral processions that this country ever saw.

If you were anybody who was anybody...

...in the st century you were there.

-Soldiers from Britain came to participate in the procession,

which started in Jericho...

...and ended up near Bethlehem in Herodium.

This brings you closer to Herod?

Do you feel like his doctor now?

I feel a great deal of sympathy...

...toward the suffering he endured at the end of his life.

Considering just some simple problem like itching.

There wasn't any good treatment at the time.

How terrible a suffering that would have been.

Do you wish you could kind of go back in time...

...and give him some antibiotics?

I'd go back in time and see if my diagnosis was correct.

[SIMCHA] Can we say Herod's illness...

...caused at least part of his savagery?

Chronic kidney disease is pretty nasty,

For most of his life he seems to have been...

...robust and healthy. An athelete and warrior.

Well, the archaeology reveals a great man.

The written word describes a monster.

Who you want Herod to be depends,