for help against her son. The result of this double-dealing was that his army was destroyed by Ptolemy, who advanced into Egypt leaving Palestine at the mercy of Cleopatra. But Cleopatra’s generals were Jews and by their protests prevented her from annexing it. Being thus freed from fear on the side of Ptolemy, Alexander continued his desultory campaigns across the Jordan and on the coast without any apparent policy and with indifferent success. Finally, when he officiated as high priest at the feast of tabernacles he roused the fury of the people by a derisive breach of the Pharisaic ritual. They cried out that he was unworthy of his office, and pelted him with the citrons which they were carrying as the Law prescribed. Alexander summoned his mercenaries, and 6000 Jews were killed before he set out on his disastrous campaign against an Arabian king. He returned a fugitive to find the nation in armed rebellion. After six years of civil war he appealed to them to state the conditions under which they would lay aside their hostility. They replied by demanding his death and called in the Syrians. But when the Syrians chased him into the mountains, 6000 Jews went over to him and, with their aid, he put down the rebellion. Eight hundred Jews who had held a fortress against him were crucified; 8000 Pharisees fled to Egypt and remained there. Offering an ineffectual resistance to the passage of the Syrian troops, Alexander was driven back by Aretas, king of Arabia, against whom they had marched. His later years brought him small victories over isolated cities.
On his deathbed it is said that Alexander advised his wife to reverse this policy and rely upon the Pharisees. According to the Talmud, he warned her “to fear neither the Pharisees nor their opponents but the hypocrites who do the deed of Zimri and claim the reward of Phinehas:” the warning indicates his justification of his policy in the matter of the crucifixions. In any case the Pharisees were predominant under Alexandra, who became queen (78–69) under her husband’s will. Hyrcanus her elder son was only high priest, as the stricter Pharisees required. All the Pharisaic ordinances which Hyrcanus had abolished were reaffirmed as binding. Simon ben Shatach stood beside the queen: the exiles were restored and among them his great colleague Jehudah ben Tabai. The great saying of each of these rabbis is concerned with the duties of a judge; the selection does justice to the importance of the Sanhedrin, which was filled with Pharisees. The legal reforms which they introduced tended for the most part to mercy, but the Talmud refers to one case which is an exception: false witnesses were condemned to suffer the penalty due to their victim, even if he escaped. This ruling may be interpreted as part of a campaign directed against the counsellors of Alexander or as an instance of their general principle that intention is equivalent to commission in the eye of the Law. The queen interposed to prevent the execution of those who had counselled the crucifixion of the rebels and permitted them to withdraw with her younger son Aristobulus to the fortresses outside Jerusalem. Against their natural desire for revenge may be set the fact that the Pharisees did much to improve the status of women among the Jews.
On the death of Alexandra (69 B.C.) Aristobulus disputed the succession of Hyrcanus. When their forces met at Jericho, Hyrcanus, finding that the bulk of his following deserted to Aristobulus, fled with those who remained to the tower Antonia and seized Aristobulus’s wife and children as hostages for his own safety. Having this advantage, he was able to abdicate in favour of Aristobulus and to retire into private life. But he was not able to save his friends, who were also the enemies of the reigning king. In fear of reprisals Antipas (or Antipater), the Idumaean, his counsellor, played on the fears of Hyrcanus and persuaded him to buy the aid of the Nabataean Arabs with promises. Aristobulus could not withstand the army of Aretas: he was driven back upon Jerusalem and there besieged. The Jews deserted to the victorious Hyrcanus: only the priests remained loyal to their accepted king; many fled to Egypt.
30. The Romans and the Idumaeans.—At this point the power of Rome appeared upon the scene in the person of M. Aemilius Scaurus (stepson of Sulla) who had been sent into Syria by Pompey (65 B.C.). Both brothers appealed to this new tribunal and Aristobulus bought a verdict in his favour. The siege was raised. Aretas retired from Judaea; and Aristobulus pursued the retreating army. But, when Pompey himself arrived at Damascus, Antipater, who pulled the strings and exploited the claims of Hyrcanus, realized that Rome and not the Arabs, who were cowed by the threats of Scaurus, was the ruler of the East. To Rome, therefore, he must pay his court. Others shared this conviction: Strabo speaks of embassies from Egypt and Judaea bearing presents—one deposited in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus bore the inscription of Alexander, the king of the Jews. From Judaea there were three embassies pleading, for Aristobulus, for Hyrcanus, and for the nation, who would have no king at all but their God.
Pompey deferred his decision until he should have inquired into the state of the Nabataeans, who had shown themselves to be capable of dominating the Jews in the absence of the Roman army. In the interval Aristobulus provoked him by his display of a certain impatience. The people had no responsible head, of whom Rome could take cognisance: so Pompey decided in favour of Hyrcanus and humoured the people by recognizing him, not as king, but as high priest. Antipater remained secure, in power if not in place. The Roman supremacy was established: the Jews were once more one of the subject states of Syria, now a Roman province. Their national aspirations had received a contemptuous acknowledgment, when their Temple had been desecrated by the entry of a foreign conqueror.
Aristobulus himself had less resolution than his partisans. When he repented of his attempted resistance and treated with Pompey for peace, his followers threw themselves into Jerusalem, and, when the faction of Hyrcanus resolved to open the gates, into the Temple. There they held out for three months, succumbing finally because in obedience to the Law (as interpreted since the time of Antiochus Epiphanes) they would only defend themselves from actual assault upon the sabbath day. The Romans profited by this inaction to push on the siege-works, without provoking resistance by actual assaults until the very end. Pompey finally took the stronghold by choosing the day of the fast, when the Jews abstain from all work, that is the sabbath (Strabo). Dio Cassius calls it the day of Cronos. On this bloody sabbath the priests showed a devotion to their worship which matched the inaction of the fighting men. Though they saw the enemy advancing upon them sword in hand they remained at worship untroubled and were slaughtered as they poured libation and burned incense, for they put their own safety second to the service of God. And there were Jews among the murderers of the 12,000 Jews who fell.
The Jews of Palestine thus became once more a subject state, stripped of their conquests and confined to their own borders. Aristobulus and his children were conveyed to Rome to grace their conqueror’s triumphal procession. But his son Alexander escaped during the journey, gathered some force, and overran Judaea. The Pharisees decided that they could not take action on either side, since the elder son of Alexandra was directed by the Idumaean Antipater; and the people had an affection for such Asmonean princes as dared to challenge the Roman domination of their ancestral kingdom. The civil war was renewed; but Aulus Gabinius, the proconsul, soon crushed the pretender and set up an aristocracy in Judaea with Hyrcanus as guardian of the Temple. The country was divided into five districts with five synods; and Josephus asserts that the people welcomed the change from the monarchy. In spite of this, Aristobulus (56 B.C.) and Alexander (55 B.C.) found loyalists to follow them in their successive raids. But Antipater found supplies for the army of Gabinius, who, despite Egyptian and Parthian distractions, restored order according to the will of Antipater. M. Crassus, who succeeded him, plundered the Temple of its gold and the treasure (54 B.C.) which the Jews of the dispersion had contributed for its maintenance. It is said that Eleazar, the priest who guarded the treasure, offered Crassus the golden beam as ransom for the whole, knowing, what no one else knew, that it was mainly composed of wood. So Crassus departed to
