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You have this princess of the grandest, royalest family. it's like a kardashian marrying a windsor. >> so he marries into the hasmonean dynasty, and mariamne knows that herod is only marrying her for political purposes. but she also fears that he's going to begin getting rid of her relatives, killing all hasmonean heirs to the jewish throne. and he's got so many roman troops with him that this shouldn't be that difficult. >> with 40,000 roman soldiers under his command, herod sets his sights on jerusalem, intent on forcing the jewish people to accept him as their king.

>> herod uses the threat of his army to force a hasmonean princess into a ketubah, a jewish marriage contract. >> and he chooses mariamne, who is young, beautiful, cultured, generally loved by everybody. >> herod's relationship with mariamne would have made really good reality television. on the one hand, herod deeply loved mariamne and expressed his love in grandiose gestures. on the other hand, she constantly berated him about his lowly status, and he always felt a sense of inferiority around her. >> it's a very jerusalem story because it contains both love and hate, as jerusalem always does...

Arrogant, and they think they can appoint anyone they like king of anywhere, not unlike certain other great powers today. >> so they decide that herod is going to be their person, and they say to him, we'll provide an army. you take jerusalem, and you will be king of judaea. and off he goes. >> but because herod is aware that he has what many jews would call a mixed-blood ancestry, proving his jewishness is a motivation for many of the actions that he takes. >> and one of those things is he could marry into the hasmonean family. he can make a claim to the throne by marrying, let's say, a jewis...

Persians to the east of the area of syria palestine. >> and when you look at a map, what you can see is that the sort of natural meeting place of conflict between these two powers is the land where jerusalem sits. >> jerusalem is now ruled by the hasmoneans, a revered jewish dynasty. >> the hasmonean dynasty was the jewish dynasty that was established by a group of jewish conservative rebels that overthrew greek rule in jerusalem and in israel. >> that revolt in 167 b.c. is commemorated by the modern jewish holiday of hanukkah. over the course of time, the hasmoneans expanded the size of their...

The great involving jonathan fails, cleopatra is furious. >> the egyptian queen works at convincing mark antony to turn on his close friend. >> cleopatra uses her huge influence with mark antony to undermine herod whenever possible. she tells tales about herod's treatment of his wife, his treatment of the jews in jerusalem, his ruthlessness. but mark antony aspires to run the whole roman empire. his interest is not to have his client kings, even such a powerful monarch as cleopatra, his partner and mother of his children, fighting amongst themselves. >> so mark antony says, listen, you have to...