In that year Herod passed through Egypt on his way to Rome to claim Judaea as his kingdom.  He came through Arabia to Pelusium, and thence he sailed to Alexandria.  Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave him honourable entertainment in her capital, and made him great offers in order to persuade him to take the command of her army.  But the Jewish prince saw that a kingdom was to be gained by offering his services to Antony and Octavianus; and he went on to Rome.  There through the friendship of Antony he was declared King of Judaea by the senate.  He then returned to Syria to collect an army and to win the kingdom which had been granted to him; and by the help of Sosius, Antony’s lieutenant, he had conquered Jerusalem when the war broke out between Antony and Octavianus.

In the next year (B.C. 38) Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on the war which ended with the battle of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria to beg Cleopatra to join him there.  On her coming, he made her perhaps the largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress:  he gave her the wide provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of Judaea, and part of Arabia Nabataea.  These large gifts only made her ask for more, and she begged him to put to death Herod, King of Judaea, and Malichus, King of Arabia Nabataea, the former of whom had advised Antony to break through the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, as the only means of saving himself from being crushed by the rising power of Octavianus.  She asked to have the whole of Arabia and Judaea given to her.  But Antony had not so far forgotten himself as to yield to these commands; and he only gave her the balsam country around Jericho, and a rent-charge of two hundred talents, or one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a year, on the revenues of Judaea.  On receiving this large addition to her kingdom, and perhaps in honour of Antony, who had then lost all power in Italy but was the real king of Egypt and its Greek provinces, Cleopatra began to count the years of her reign afresh:  what was really the sixteenth of her reign, and had been called the sixteenth of Ptolemy, her elder brother, she called the first of her own reign, and she reckoned them in the same way till her death.  Cleopatra had accompanied Antony on his expedition against Armenia, as far as the river Euphrates, and returned through Damascus to Judaea.  There she was politely received by her enemy Herod, who was too much in fear of Antony to take his revenge on her.  She farmed out to him the revenues of her parts of Arabia and Judaea, and was accompanied by him on her way towards Egypt.  But after wondering at the wasteful feasts and gifts, in which pearls and provinces were alike trifled with, we are reminded that even Cleopatra was of the family of the Lagido, and that she was well aware how much the library of the museum had added to the glory of Alexandria.  It had been burnt by the Roman troops under Caesar, and, to make amends for this, Antony