Description
The lecherous Herod Antipas—Herod the Tetrarch—ruled Judaea from 4 BC to AD 39, a period comprising the entirety of the life of Christ. In about AD 34, Antipas married his brother’s widow, the fetching Herodias, while openly lusting for Herodias’s adoptive daughter, famed femme fatale Salome. This led to one of the most famous passages in the Gospels: the beheading of John the Baptist, demanded by Salome when Antipas offered to grant her a wish. In order to marry his brothers wife, Herod Antipas had first to divorce his first wife, the Nabatean princess Phasaelis, daughter of the great king Aretas IV Philopatris. When the princess returned home in shame, her father raised an army, successfully invading the domain of Antipas. Only Roman intervention spared him his life. –This is a bronze coin struck during the reign of the Nabatean king Aretas IV, who ruled from 9 BC to AD 40. It features a double cornucopia
