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

Antioch in Syria, did not he pave it with polished marble, though it were
twenty furlongs long? and this when it was shunned by all men before,
because it was full of dirt and filthiness, when he besides adorned the same
place with a cloister of the same length.
12. It is true, a man may say, these were favors peculiar to those
particular places on which he bestowed his benefits; but then what favors he
bestowed on the Eleans was a donation not only in common to all Greece,
but to all the habitable earth, as far as the glory of the Olympic games
reached. For when he perceived that they were come to nothing, for want of
money, and that the only remains of ancient Greece were in a manner gone,
he not only became one of the combatants in that return of the fifth-year
games, which in his sailing to Rome he happened to be present at, but he
settled upon them revenues of money for perpetuity, insomuch that his
memorial as a combatant there can never fail. It would be an infinite task if I
should go over his payments of people's debts, or tributes, for them, as he
eased the people of Phasaelis, of Batanea, and of the small cities about
Cilicia, of those annual pensions they before paid. However, the fear he was
in much disturbed the greatness of his soul, lest he should be exposed to
envy, or seem to hunt after greater filings than he ought, while he bestowed
more liberal gifts upon these cities than did their owners themselves.
13. Now Herod had a body suited to his soul, and was ever a most
excellent hunter, where he generally had good success, by the means of his
great skill in riding horses; for in one day he caught forty wild beasts: (5)
that country breeds also bears, and the greatest part of it is replenished with
stags and wild asses. He was also such a warrior as could not be withstood:
many men, therefore, there are who have stood amazed at his readiness in his
exercises, when they saw him throw the javelin directly forward, and shoot
the arrow upon the mark. And then, besides these performances of his
depending on his own strength of mind and body, fortune was also very
favorable to him; for he seldom failed of success in his wars; and when he
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