Herod the Great (73 BC-4 BC), King of Judea, was an example of a class of client princes who kept their thrones by balancing between being overthrown by their own peoples for too much subservience to Rome and being dismissed by the Romans for too much independence.

Judea was one among the many petty states into which the Hellenistic East had fragmented, ruled by high priests of the Hasmonean dynasty, descendants of the leaders who had freed the country from Seleucid rule. These Hasmoneans, however, were eager to raise revolts and engage in civil wars against each other, and Palestine was a cockpit of contending factions and forces. Against this background Herod's family rose to prominence; a Hasmonean, King Alexander Jannaeus, had appointed Herod's grandfather, who was probably an Idumean, to some sort of governorship in Idumea. Herod's father, Antipater, took a prominent part in a civil war between...