03_Biblica_Sharon_Layout 1 01/04/14 11:46 Pagina 58 58 NADAV SHARON VI. Herod and Augustus and Herodian Messianism If Herod is said to have been fifteen in the spring of 47, then his imagined, not his actual, date of birth would have been between the spring of 63 and the spring of 62 26, and thus close to two very important events: the birth of Augustus and Pompey’s conquest of the Jerusalem Temple. 1. Augustus is said to have been born on September 23, 63 BCE (Suetonius, Aug. 5; OGIS 458). It is not inconceivable that Nicolaus, who was an associate of both Herod and Augustus, and who not only wrote at length about the former in his universal history but also wrote a biography of the latter, attempted to make Herod the same age as, or perhaps slightly younger than, Augustus 27. A factor which may have caused Nicolaus to link the births of his two associates is the sometimes overlooked similarity between their biographies 28: the fathers (or adoptive father in the case of Augustus) of both were murdered at the peak of their political careers by their enemies 29; both took vengeance on their fathers’ assassins; both reached ab- solute rule, which their fathers had not achieved; both had to build that rule on the ruins of the previous regime, the Republic and the Hasmonean dynasty; at the inception of their rule both carried out massive proscriptions of their rivals; at one point or another both killed their former allies (Anthony in the case of Augustus, and Hyr- canus II and other Hasmoneans in the case of Herod); the rise of both brought an end to long periods of internal conflict and civil wars and brought long periods of relative calm; both were great builders, especially of temples; both encountered humiliations on account of their (supposed) inferior origins — Herod as a commoner (e.g., see Ant. 14.78, 491), an Idumean (see Ant. 14.8-9), and a “half- Jew” (Ant. 14.403), and Augustus taunted by Anthony and others for being a descendant of a freedman, a money-changer, an African, 26 No account of Herod’s birth is extant, but it is likely that Nicolaus some- where recounted his birth, and he may have situated it in accordance with his statement that Herod was fifteen in 47 BCE. 27 Note that Nicolaus himself is thought to have been born c. 64 BCE; WACHOLDER, Nicolaus, 16; Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, I, 227. 28 TOHER, “Herod, Augustus & Nicolaus”, 78-80, is an exception. 29 Antipater, Herod’s father, is said to have been poisoned (War 1.226; Ant. 14.281), but see M. STERN, Hasmonaean Judaea in the Hellenistic World. Chap- ters in Political History (ed. D.R. SCHWARTZ) (Jerusalem 1995) 244 (Hebrew).