Today is the commemoration of the Holy Innocents.

[struggle4progress]

40. Many people noticed Herod's cruelty in pursuit of power. Octavian (for example) famously remarked

"It's safer to be Herod's pig than Herod's son"

... After putting down the Judean/Parthian revolt against their rule, Rome appointed Herod king of Judea. Herod had complete authority, and he used it ruthlessly. He established an enormous secret police force, brutally killed anyone suspected of plotting against him, and created Roman peace by slaughtering all dissidents. Herod controlled the sacrificial cult by placing a lackey in the position of High Priest. In any of his appointees was foolish enough to displease him, Herod killed him and replaced him with another lackey ...
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Herod.html

... Herod's atrocities included the drowning of Mariamne's brother Aristobolus III in 35 after appointing him high priest and seeing his popularity soar, the execution of Hyrcanus in 30 on charges of conspiracy after his return from Parthian captivity, of Mariamne in 29 on charges of adultery and plotting to murder him, of his mother-in-law Alexandra a year later after an attempted coup, and of three of his sons ...
http://www.answers.com/topic/herod-the-great

... Herod's reign ended in terror. The monastery at Qumran, the home of the Essenes, suffered a violent and deliberate destruction by fire in 8 BCE, for which Herod may have been responsible. When the king fell ill, two popular teachers, Judas and Matthias, incited their pupils to remove the golden eagle from the entrance of the Temple: after all, according to the Ten Commandments, it was a sin to make idols. The teachers and the pupils were burned alive ... The story about the slaughter of infants of Bethlehem .. is not known from other sources, but it would have been totally in character for the later Herod to commit such a terrible act ...
http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great02.html

... Hearing .. that the king was gradually sinking .. these teachers threw out hints .. that this was the fitting moment .. to pull down what had been erected .. for .. the king had .. erected over the great gate a golden eagle ... At mid-day, accordingly, when numbers of people were perambulating the Temple, they let themselves down from the roof on stout cords and began chopping off the golden eagle with hatchets. The king's captain .. hastened to the scene with a considerable force, arrested about forty of the young men and conducted them to the king. Herod first asked them whether they had dared to cut down the golden eagle; they admitted it ... This provoked the king to such fury that ... he ordered those that had let themselves down from the roof, together with the teachers, to be burnt alive; the remainder of those arrested he handed over to his executioners ...
http://www.josephus.org/causesOfWar.htm#eagle

Herod was the slave of the Hasmonean house ... One day he heard a Bath Kol say, 'Every slave that rebels now will succeed.' So he rose and killed all the members of his master's household ... Who are they, he said, who teach, From the midst of thy brethren thou shalt set up a king over thee? The Rabbis! He therefore arose and killed all the Rabbis, sparing, however, Baba b. Buta, that he might take counsel of him. But he placed on his head a garland of hedgehog bristles and put out his eyes ...
http://halakhah.com/bababathra/bababathra_3.html
http://halakhah.com/bababathra/bababathra_4.html

... On his deathbed, Herod had a feeling that not too many tears would be shed upon the news of his death. To make sure the day of his death would be a really bad day for the Jews and to increase the general amount of mourning, Herod imprisoned the Who's Who of Jewish society and ordered to execute the entire bunch of them the second he died ...
http://www.emersonkent.com/history_notes/herod_the_great.htm