ARETA (Ἀριτάθι). — Nabatean kings who, Petra (v.), ruled over Arabia from the Elanitic Gulf to Damascus.
A. I is mentioned by Flavius Josephus as the “tyrannos” of the Arabs; to him fled the impious Jewish high priest Jason (2 Macc. 5:8).
A. II waged war against the Hasmonean Alexander Jannaeus, whom he defeated near Adida, near Lydda (Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Iudaicae, XIII, 15, 2).
With A. III (c. 85–60 BC) the Nabatean kingdom reached its greatest extent. Having defeated Antiochus VII of Syria (d. 83 BC), A. took possession of Coele Syria and Damascus. He interfered in the Jewish civil war, siding with Hyrcanus against Aristobulus, whom he besieged in Jerusalem; but he was forced by Scaurus, lieutenant of Pompey, who had recently annexed Syria to Rome (63 BC), to abandon the siege, and on his retreat was defeated by Aristobulus near Papyron (Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Iudaicae, XIV, 1, 4–2, 3).
The best-known representative of the dynasty is A. IV (9 BC–AD 40), who was originally named Aeneas, son of Obodas III, recognized by Augustus as king of the Nabateans. He had given his daughter in marriage to Antipas (v.). When Antipas repudiated her to marry Herodias (v.), A. sought to avenge the affront and in AD 36 defeated Antipas near Gamala. But Tiberius, to whom Antipas had appealed, ordered Vitellius, governor of Syria, to capture A. alive or dead. The order, however, was not carried out owing to the intervening death of the emperor (16 March AD 37). When St Paul (2 Cor. 11:32) was sought by the Jews in Damascus, the “ethnarch of A.” had placed guards at the city’s gates to seize him. It would seem, therefore, that A. exercised jurisdiction over Damascus between AD 37 and 40, perhaps granted him by Caligula. Yet this authority of A. over Damascus is not certain: his ethnarch does not arrest Paul in the city but merely keeps watch at its approaches (Acts 9:24).