Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's history here.

It was a time of violent upheaval in the Levant, what we call today the Middle East, in Syria,

in Palestine. It was the first century BC.

The Greek Hellenistic kingdom who ruled over the areas, since Alexander the Great conquered it from the Persians,

lost out to the invading armies of the Roman Republic.

The Romans in turn were driven out by the Parthians.

Through that period, what we might call Judah today, which sits in modern Israel and

the West Bank, had been ruled over by the Hasmanians.

They'd managed the area on behalf of various overlords, empires that had come and gone.

Among the retainers of the Hasmanians, a figure emerged. His name was Herod. Following the conquest of

this area by the Parthians, Herod convinced the Romans to back him, supply him with troops,

and he would reconquer it, rule over a reconstituted kingdom under Rome's auspices.

He succeeded and was crowned King Herod, infamous now in the Christian tradition as the

unlikely, unlikeable minor character in the Christmas tale, in which he allegedly massacres

of the innocents, killed all the children in Bethlehem in an effort

to kill the baby Jesus after he heard that the future king of the Jews had been born in the

area. But did that happen? Or is it just a story that reflects his wider cruelty, his violence

towards his own family and his enemies.

We're doing a deep dive right here on the podcast,

all about King Herod, The Life and Times.

We're talking to Seth Schwartz.

He's a professor of classical Jewish civilization in the Department of History at Columbia University.

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