Mark 6:14

(14) That John the Baptist was risen from the dead.—See Notes on Matthew 14:1-2. In addition an interesting illustration of what is stated as to Herod’s belief may be given from the Roman poet Persius. He is describing in one of his satires (v. 180-188) the effect of superstitious fear in marring all the pleasures of the pride of luxurious pomp, and this is the illustration which he chooses:—

“But when the feast of Herod’s birthday comes,And, through the window, smoke-besmeared, the lamps,Set in due order, wreaths of violets round,Pour out their oily fumes, and in the dishOf red-clay porcelain tail of tunny swims,And the white flagon bellies out with wine,Thou mov’st thy lips, yet speak’st not, and in fearThou keep’st the Sabbath of the circumcised,And then there rise dark spectres of the dead,And the cracked egg-shell bodes of coming ill . . .

It is clear that a description so minute in its details must have been photographed, as it were, from some actual incident, and could not have been merely a general picture of the prevalence of Jewish superstition in Roman society. Commentators on the Roman poet have, however, failed to find any clue to the incident thus graphically related. Can we, starting from what the Gospels tell us as to the character of Antipas, picture to ourselves a scene that explains his strange mysterious hints? In A.D. 39 Herod Agrippa I., the nephew of the Tetrarch, obtained the title of king from the Emperor Caligula. Prompted by the ambition of Herodias, Antipas went with her to Rome, to seek, by lavish gifts and show of state, the same distinction. The emissaries of Agrippa, however, thwarted his schemes, and he was deposed and sent into exile at Lugdunum. May we not conjecture that the same superstitious terror which made him say that John the Baptist was risen from the dead followed him there also? “Herod’s birthday” again comes round, and there is a great feast, and instead of the “lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee,” senators and courtiers and philosophers are there, and, lo! there is a pause, and the Tetrarch rises in silent horror—as Macbeth at the apparition of Banquo’s ghost—and he sees the dark form shaking its gory locks, and his lips move in speechless terror, and he “does many things” on the coming Sabbath, and the thing becomes a by-word and a proverb in the upper circles of Roman society, and is noted in the schools of the Stoics as an illustration of what superstition can effect. The view thus stated is, of course, not more than a conjecture, but it at least explains phenomena. Persius died, at the age of twenty-eight or thirty, in A.D. 62, and may well therefore have heard the matter talked of in his boyhood.