Herodium - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 834

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

HERODIUM. - A characteristic artificial truncated-conical hill situated 6 km from Betlemme in a south-easterly direction. Erode il Grande erected there a monument called H., probably to commemorate the victory won over the Jews who attacked him while he was travelling from Gerusalemme to Masada (Fl. Giuseppe, Antiq. Iud., XIV, 9, 4; Bell. Iud., I, 21, 10; IV, 9, 5). By his own choice he was buried there (Antiq. Iud., XVII, 8, 3; Bell. Iud., I, 33, 9).

No excavations have ever been carried out there; nevertheless, at the summit one can make out an enclosing wall and circular chambers arranged at the four cardinal points and, below, numerous remains of houses and a reservoir. The Arabs call it Gebel el-Furejdis (“mountain of the little paradise”).

BIBL.: C. Schick, Der Frauenberg, in Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 3 (1880), pp. 88-89 and plates 4-5, with reconstructions largely imaginary; C. R. Conder, Survey of western Palestine, III, Londra 1883, pp. 330-32, with a sketch of the ruins; F.-M. Abel, Exils et tombeaux des Héodes, in Revue biblique, 53 (1946), pp. 67-69.