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40 Things About The Outlandish Math Cult Leader, and Other Unusual Facts From the Ancient World

Khalid Elhassan May 22, 2020 33 min

Democritus and Protagoras - Odysseus and Nausicaa (Ulysses and Nausicaa) — 'Pythagoras and the Fishermen', by Salvatore Rosa. Wikimedia

23. Don’t Call Me “Honey”

Mariamne and her children. Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum

Herod’s wife, Mariamne, was a stunning beauty, and he was crazy about her. Not the good kind of crazy, though. On the one hand, he was passionately in love with her. On the other hand, he was also crazy jealous. While Herod loved Mariamne, she did not return the feeling.

It was understandable, considering that Herod had killed her brother and uncle. That was on top of the fact that Herod’s father had killed Mariamne’s father, then embalmed him in a tub of honey. That might have led to awkwardness if Herod ever called his wife “honey” as a term of endearment. Despite the marriage’s shaky grounds, Herod still had five children with Mariamne – two girls and three boys.

Also Read: History’s Deadliest Relatives.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.