Herod the Great

About this book

The author begins his story with a swift-moving summary of the background out of which Herod emerged, and then conducts the reader through seventy troubled years of plots, battles, assassinations and hairbreadth escapes until, shortly after the Slaughter of the Innocents, he succumbed to a mysterious disease marked by dementia and insatiable hunger. The reader will come to understand the justice and charity of the author's assessment of Herod: "... a complex personality motivated by ideals of ambitions not unreasonable or at first objectionable, who crashed into insurmountable obstacles that brought ruin to him and those about him" -- a man who might have been good, but does indeed deserve to be called "the Great". [Book jacket].