POLITICS AN DSOCIETY 47undertoo kalmost no public construction in the city. The residential quarters
grew, and so the city walls were extended and a palace was built. But the
temple remained the tiny structure built by Zerubbabel in the late sixth cen-
tury, incapable of containing a vastly increased Jewish population. Herod re-
built all the public areas of the city on a much grander scale than ever before,
but the main feature of his construction was the new temple, now one of the
largest structures in the Roman Empire, with a courtyard that could accom-
modate vast numbers of pilgrims. It was Herod’s Jerusalem that the Roman
writer Pliny the Elder could describe as “by far the most famous city of the
East,” and that a Talmudic storyteller could call the recipient of nine of the
ten measures of beauty that God allotted to the world.^71
Herod’s construction had several important effects. It created many thou-
sands of jobs and would continue to do so for several decades after Herod’s
death. The temple was not completed until 64C.E., only six years before its
destruction, and its completion is said by Josephus to have put 18,000 laborers
out of wor k(Ant20.219–22). Herod’s construction projects may thus be seen
as the functional equivalent of the Hasmoneans’ conquests, now ruled out by
the Roman peace, which had also provided incomes for thousands of Jews.
The construction also changed the character of Jerusalem and of Jewish
Palestine as a whole. Jerusalem was no longer a remote hill country town, of
interest mainly to Judaean peasants and to the occasional foreign general look-
ing to steal some silver from the treasury of its temple. It was now the metropo-
lis of all the world’s Jews, whether they were Judaean or hailed from the an-
nexed districts of Palestine or the Roman or Parthian Diaspora. Jerusalem had
perhaps long been the symbolic or sentimental Jewish center, but now it was
so in reality, as well. It is only in Herod’s reign and later that we hear of throngs
of Jews from all over the world gathered in the city for the pilgrimage festivals
of Passover, Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), or Sukkot (the Feast of Booths),
and of the disturbances that sometimes broke out as a result.^72
In sum, Herod’s policies built on those of the Hasmoneans and turned
Jewish Palestine into a single state, a state furthermore that was closely tied
to the Jewish communities of the Diaspora. This achievement, which was of
enduring significance, by no means contradicts the probable baseness of his
motivations or the brutality of his character, but surely it is as deserving of
attention as his sordid family life, which is the main concern of the ancient
sources but will not detain us here.
(^71) See N. Avigad et al. “Jerusalem,”NEAEHL, 2.717–57; Richardson,Herod, 174–215; M.
Goodman,The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt against Rome(Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 51–75.
(^72) See L. Levine, “Josephus’ Description of the Jerusalem Temple: War, Antiquities, and Other
Sources,” in F. Parente and J. Sievers, eds.,Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period:
Essays in Memory of Morton Smith(Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 242–44; S. Weitzman, “From Feasts
into Mourning: The Violence of Early Jewish Festivals,”Journal of Religion79 (1999): 545–65.