That after this clear recognition John sent some of his disciples to seek from Jesus an ex plicit assertion of his Messiahship has some times been explained as due to a desire to ob tain confirmation of the faith of these disciples, but the answer of Jesus makes it probable that it was due to some lack, at the time at least, of positive conviction in John's own mind, per haps because the method of Jesus in presenting himself to the nation was not what John had expected, an uncertainty very probably inten sified by the depression which his imprison ment may be presumed to have caused or in tensified. But in the discourse which followed Jesus took occasion to eulogize John as greater than any of the prophets, as the greatest man who had ever lived.
After his recognition of Jesus as the One for whom he was preparing the way, John con tinued his work for a time, perhaps for some months, presumably with the feeling that the people still needed in mind and life the work which he had been doing. But his fidelity to his mission as a preacher of repentance and right living soon cost him his liberty and in the end his life. Herod Antipas, the ruler under Rome of Galilee and Perea, had taken to him self the wife of his brother Philip. This dou bly adulterous connection John denounced openly and apparently to Herod's own face, having perhaps been summoned by him to preach at court. This aroused such a fury of
hate, especially in Herodias, the woman in the case, that John was imprisoned in the fortress of Macharus near the Dead Sea, in the ruins of which marks of fetters may still be traced on the walls of the dungeons. Finally after perhaps months of hesitation on the part of Herod, by the shameful artifice of allowing her daughter Salome actually to appear as a dan cing girl before Herod and his guests at a feast, he was induced to swear that he would give the girl whatever she asked, and when she demanded in fulfilment of this rash promise 'The head of John the Baptist on a platter at once," he was beheaded in the prison and the head was carried to Herodias, who is said to have wreaked her fury on the inanimate object of her hate. There seem to have been for years groups of men who were known as disciples of John the Baptist, but with this tragedy his great influence ended, for though, as Jesus called him, he was