Herodias

Herodias (Hérodias) is the third and shortest of the Three Tales (Trois contes, 1877), the late short-story collection by the French writer Gustave Flaubert, and the one set in the most distant past. The story takes place in the fortress of Machaerus, perched on a basalt peak east of the Dead Sea: Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Judea, is holding a great banquet for his birthday, the Roman governor of Syria, Vitellius, is about to arrive, and the atmosphere in the palace is both luxurious and tense. His wife Herodias harbors a grudge against John the Baptist, who is imprisoned in the dungeon—the prophet had publicly denounced her union with Herod as unlawful. Herodias therefore lays a secret plan: she uses her daughter Salome's dance at the banquet to enchant Herod, who then promises to grant her any wish; at her mother's bidding, Salome asks for the prophet's head, and the executioner carries out the order. With archaeological detail, intense color, and a cold narrative manner, Flaubert compresses the palace intrigues, desire, and religious fanaticism into a single day and night, ending in the silence of the prophet's disciples as they await the Messiah. The work later deeply influenced Oscar Wilde's Salome and other later creations. This translation is of a single work; if the reader's copy is a collection or anthology, the specific edition should be consulted.