suspicions.  But at last he appeared so well satisfied of her innocence; that from reproaches, and wranglings, he fell to tears and embraces.  Both of them wept very tenderly at their reconciliation and Herod pour’d out his whole soul to her in the warmest protestations of love and constancy; when, amidst all his sighs and languishings, she asked him, whether the private orders he left with his uncle Joseph were an instance of such an enflamed affection?  The jealous king was immediately roused at so unexpected a question, and concluded his uncle must have been too familiar with her, before he would have discovered such a secret.  In short he put his uncle to death, and very difficultly prevailed on himself to spare Mariamne.

’After this he was forced on a second journey into Egypt, when he committed his lady to the care of Sohemus, with the same private orders he had before given his uncle, if any mischief befel himself:  In the meantime Mariamne had so won upon Sohemus, by her presents and obliging behaviour, that she drew all the secret from him, with which Herod had entrusted him; so that after his return, when he flew to her, with all the transports of joy and love, she received him coldly with sighs and tears, and all the marks of indifference and aversion.  This reception so stirred up his indignation, that he had certainly slain her with his own hands, had not he feared he himself should become the greater sufferer by it.  It was not long after this, when he had another violent return of love upon him; Mariamne was therefore sent for to him, whom he endeavoured to soften and reconcile with all possible conjugal caresses, and endearments; but she declined his embraces, and answered all his fondness, with bitter invectives for the death of her father and her brother.

’This behaviour so incensed Herod, that he very hardly refrained from striking her; when in the heat of their quarrel, there came in a witness, suborned by some of Mariamne’s enemies, who accused her to the king of a design to poison him.  Herod was now prepared to hear any thing in her prejudice, and immediately ordered her servant to be stretched upon the rack; who in the extremity of his tortures confest, that his mistresses aversion to the king arose from something Sohemus had told her; but as for any design of poisoning, he utterly disowned the least knowledge of it.  This confession quickly proved fatal to Sohemus, who now lay under the same suspicions and sentence, that Joseph had before him, on the like occasion.  Nor would Herod rest here; but accused her with great vehemence of a design upon his life, and by his authority with the judges had her publickly condemned and executed.

’Herod soon after her decease grew melancholy and dejected, retiring from the public administration of affairs, into a solitary forest, and there abandoned himself to all the black considerations, which naturally arise from a passion made up of