Buildings of Herod

Buildings of Herod.

With the accession of Herod the city entered on a period of outward brilliancy. He was the great building king, and is renowned especially for the palace that he erected and for the Temple that he restored. The palace was built (24 B.C.) upon the extreme western part near the present Jaffa Gate, where to-day are the barracks and the Armenian Garden. It was walled in to the height of 30 cubits; it had towers, many porticos in which were pillars, and large chambers; and outside were groves of trees, a deep canal, cisterns, and brazen statues, all of which excite the admiration of Josephus. Herod's restoration of the Temple, begun in 20 B.C. (finished in 62-64 C.E.), was carried out with great magnificence. He built also a theater, and in the plain ("P. E. F. S." 1887, p. 161) an amphitheater covered with "inscriptions of the great actions of Cæsar" ("Ant." xv. 8, § 1; a hippodrome, according to "B. J." ii. 3, § 1), as well as a town hall, near the present maHkamah; and in the northeast he erected a monument to himself ("B. J." v. 12, § 2), which can not be exactly located. He enlarged the Baris commanding the Temple on the north, and renamed it "Antonia." It was connected with the Temple by a flight of stairs (Acts xxi. 35). He does not seem to have added to the walls, but to have strengthened and beautified them to the north of his palace by four towers called respectively "Psephinus" (an octagon 70 cubits high), "Hippicus" (a square of 25 cubits), "Mariamne" (a square of 40 cubits), and "Phasael" (a square of 30 cubits). In these towers were reservoirs and living-rooms; and they had battlements and turrets ("B. J." v. 4, § 3). Of the other features of the city at this time may be mentioned the κολυμβήθρα Аμύγδαλον ("B. J." v. 11, § 4), which, if it represents the Hebrew "Berekat ha-Migdalim," must have been in the neighborhood of the four towers. Where the "Lishkat ha-Gazit," in which the Sanhedrin sat, was situated is not clear. According to the Mishnah, it was in the inner court of the Temple. If it is the Vcyουλή of Josephus, or rather the Vcyουλευτήριον, it must have been on the western side of the Temple mount not far from the Xystus, of which word the Hebrew "Gazit" would be a translation (Schürer, "Gesch." 3d ed., ii. 211). The city, largely extended as it was to the north, was indeed magnificent in appearance, but with a strangely Roman character imprinted upon an Oriental background.

Jerusalem