falsely styled the Great, king and execrable tyrant of Judæa; who, on the strength of a misinterpreted prophecy, caused all the male children of Bethlehem and its neighbourhood to be massacred by his soldiers at the time of the birth of Christ, in the vain hope of destroying the Saviour of mankind. He died, eaten with worms, two or three years after the birth of our Saviour, at the age of 71, after a reign of 40 years. He had ordered that all the persons of quality, whom he kept in prison, should be massacred the moment the breath was out of his body, in order that every considerable family in the kingdom might shed tears at his death; but that inhuman order was not executed.