In some cases at least, it was his zeal for orderly administration that caused friction with the people. His law sentencing burglars to foreign slavery is an instance (Jos. Ant. XVI. i. 1). In general, however, the mere suppression of more or less organized brigandage was a task that took all his attention, but this “brigandage” was often a real attempt at revolution, in which popular teachers were suspected of being implicated, and every such suppression carried with it in its train a series of executions that did not increase the king’s popularity.
These “robbers” or “brigands” were of different types. The distinction which Roman lawyers made between war proper, _iustum bellum_, and brigandage, _latrocinium_, was in Syria and the surrounding regions rather quantitative than qualitative. So, after Herod’s first defeat by the Arabians, “he engaged in robberies,” τοὐντεῦθεν ὁ μὲν Ἡρώδης ληστείαις ἐχρῆτο (Jos. Ant. XV. v. 1), which meant only that he made short incursions into the enemy’s country, until he had the strength to attempt another pitched battle. So also of the Trachonitians (_ibid._ XVI. ix. 3). Every one of the expeditions in which the Hasmonean rulers had increased their dominions had been in the eyes of the Syrian historians “robberies.” Itureans and other Syrians had been guilty of them under the last Seleucids.[297] In the prologue to Pompeius Trogus’ Thirty-ninth Book, as contained in Justin’s epitome,[298] we hear the conquests of John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannai described as _latrocinia_. And again (xl. 2) we read that Pompey refused the petition of Antiochus, son of Cyzicenus, to be called king of Syria, on the ground that Antiochus had miserably shirked his responsibilities for eleven years, and he, Pompey, would not give him what he could not maintain, “lest he should again expose Syria to Jewish and Arabian brigands,” _ne rursus Syriam Iudaeorum et Arabum latrociniis infestam reddat_.
Herod had kept these robbers in check, and had effectually fulfilled his tacit engagement to the _populus Romanus_. His death immediately removed the strong hand. His son Archelaus found an insurrection on his hands almost at once, which he suppressed with great bloodshed. The moment he left for Rome to maintain his claims to a part of this inheritance, the governor of Syria suppressed another revolt; and hardly had he turned his back, when his procurator Sabinus found himself surrounded by a determined band of rebels recruited principally from Galilee, Idumaea, Jericho, and the trans-Jordan territory. In spite of a successful sortie by the Romans, Sabinus was nothing less than besieged in the Tower of Phasael.