herod the great: the true story
20.00–21.00

One of the greatest tyrants in history is the focus of this fascinating new documentary on Five. King Herod the Great is remembered in the Bible as the man who ordered the slaughter of countless babiesin his efforts to murder the infant Jesus. Legend also has it that he killed his own wife and preservedher in honey. But other sources record that Herod was responsible for numerous feats of engineeringand construction. This film attempts to get to the bottom of the myth and separate fact from legend, combining expert analysis, CGI and dramatisations.

The documentary pieces together the life story ofHerod from his beginnings as a tribal outsider to themental and physical illnesses that ultimately claimed his life. Bringing together internationally renowned experts such as historian Al Baumgarten, archaeologist Jodi Magness, and psychiatric expert Dr Trevor Turner of University Hospital, London, the film creates a psychological and historical profile of Herod and poses the question: was he an evil dictator, madman or visionary genius?

The story begins with Herod’s origins in a tribe called the Idumeans, who lived on the southern edge of the kingdom of Judea. A few generations before Herod’s birth, this pagan tribe converted to Judaism, but Herod’s roots always haunted him, and he craved membership of the exclusive royal dynasty that stretched back to King David.

The film charts Herod’s progress to the Judean throne. Through a combination of brutality, shrewdpolitics and marriage to a royal princess, Marianne – whom he later executed – Herod worked his wayup through the ranks. But it was his alliance with Rome that sealed his accession to the throne. Brokering a deal with Mark Antony, Herod becameKing of the Jews at the age of 36.

As king, Herod proved to be something of a visionary, constructing vast cities, temples and palaces. The documentary travels to modern day Israel and Palestine to visit the key sites of Herod’s reign. Stunning aerial photography and computer graphics help recreate Herod’s great monuments, including the mighty palace of Herodium and the city of Caesarea. Built as a tribute to the Roman emperor Octavian, Caesarea boasted the world’s first man-made harbour, as well as a spectacular amphitheatre and stadium.

Herod’s crowning achievement, however, was the Temple of Jerusalem, built in a deliberate attempt to woo his Jewish subjects and position himself as Solomon’s heir. One of the largest temples in the ancient world, it took 10,000 men to build. Yet as a non-Jew, it was, ironically, a building that Herod himself could never set foot in.

Turning to the darker side of the Herod myth, the film tackles the underlying illnesses that drove him to tyranny and finally death. Legend reports that Herod was devoured by worms as a punishment from God for his wickedness. However, modern science has postulated a rather less gruesome end for the dictator. Dr Walter Loebl, a rheumatologist at the Royal College of Physicians, has studied Herod’s medical conditions for the last twenty five years and has concluded that he actually suffered from kidney and heart failure.

But no investigation of the life of Herod would be complete without an examination of his most barbaric alleged deed: the ‘massacre of the innocents’. Did Herod really order the murder of every child in Bethlehem under the age of two? Herod’s reputation as a brutal tyrant certainly suggests he was capable of the crime, but the film questions the truth of the story. The massacre is only recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, while Josephus, the greatest historical source on Herod, is strangely silent about the episode. Could it be that for the last two thousand years, Herod has been wrongly vilified for a crime he did not commit?