From the Taking of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes to the Death of Herod the Great - Flavius Josephus

talents, and how Antigonus had devoted the greatest number of the women
that were there with them, among the five hundred, to the Parthians; they
also perceived that an ambush was always laid for them by the barbarians in
the night time; they had also been seized on before this, unless they had
waited for the seizure of Herod first at Jerusalem, because if he were once
informed of this treachery of theirs, he would take care of himself; nor was
this a mere report, but they saw the guards already not far off them.
5. Nor would Phasaelus think of forsaking Hyrcanus and flying away,
although Ophellius earnestly persuaded him to it; for this man had learned
the whole scheme of the plot from Saramalla, the richest of all the Syrians.
But Phasaelus went up to the Parfilian governor, and reproached him to his
face for laying this treacherous plot against them, and chiefly because he had
done it for money; and he promised him that he would give him more money
for their preservation, than Antigonus had promised to give for the kingdom.
But the sly Parthian endeavored to remove all this suspicion by apologies
and by oaths, and then went [to the other] Pacorus; immediately after which
those Parthians who were left, and had it in charge, seized upon Phasaelus
and Hyrcanus, who could do no more than curse their perfidiousness and
their perjury.
6. In the mean time, the cup-bearer was sent [back], and laid a plot how
to seize upon Herod, by deluding him, and getting him out of the city, as he
was commanded to do. But Herod suspected the barbarians from the
beginning; and having then received intelligence that a messenger, who was
to bring him the letters that informed him of the treachery intended, had
fallen among the enemy, he would not go out of the city; though Pacorus
said very positively that he ought to go out, and meet the messengers that
brought the letters, for that the enemy had not taken them, and that the
contents of them were not accounts of any plots upon them, but of what
Phasaelus had done; yet had he heard from others that his brother was seized;
and Alexandra (3) the shrewdest woman in the world, Hyrcanus's daughter,
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