preserving to us the calendar, which supplies us with clear evidence of the means by which the Pharisees attempted to confirm and increase their power in the nation.

After the great Asmonean victories, therefore, we observe the government in its most important aspects committed entirely into the hands of the Pharisees. John Hyrcanus, who grew up while they were organising themselves and acquiring their power, was himself their disciple and was greatly beloved by them. In the outward circumstances of life, it is true, he was evidently somewhat inclined to the usages and fancies prevailing among Greek princes. Following the fashion which had become general since the days of Alexander, he built a strong castle called Hyrcanium (or Hyrcania), after his own name, probably in the north-east, beyond the Jordan. Further south he erected a second castle at Machærûs, the name of which often occurs in later days. In like manner, his son Alexander Jannæus built an Alexandreum north-east of Jerusalem,3 and another Asmonean prince, probably later still, constructed the very strong fortress of Masâda, on the south-west of the Dead Sea, which played so important a part in subsequent history. John also certainly added to the castle of Baris in Jerusalem. The Pharisees, however, assuredly did not find fault with him for this princely inclination, for in gratifying it he was at the same time promoting the security of his treasures and his country; and to surround Judea with a girdle of fortresses could not appear anything but a wise precaution against enemies on every hand. On one festive occasion, however, when he had invited a large number of them, in the course of conversation he jokingly enquired of these severe judges of morality whether they had any failure of righteousness to find fault with in him, as he would gladly amend it. Upon this one of them named Eleazar hastily objected that he should content himself with sovereign power and lay down the high-priesthood, as his mother in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes had been a slave. This impudent scribe, who was probably only very young, actually wished, therefore, to give a retrospective efficacy

Jos. Ant. xiii. 16, 3; xiv. 5, ; XV. 10, 4; xvii. 7, 1; Bell. Jud. i. 8, 2, 5; 33, 7.

2 Jos. Bell. Jud. vii. 6, 5; Ant. xiii. 16, 3; xiv. 5, 2; 6, 1; xviii. 5, 1, &c.; Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 16.

Jos. Ant. xiii. 16, 3, and still more expressly, xiv. 3, 4; 5, 2, 4. It has been supposed that this is the modern Istuna, on the northern boundary of Judea (Rit

ter's Erdkunde, xv. 452 sqq.), but this is so far somewhat uncertain.

4 The name of this fortress does not occur before the time of the last Asmoneans, and first appears in Jos. Ant. xiv. 11, 7. In Bell. Jud. vii. 8, 3, however, its first construction is referred to Jonathan; it is not clear whether John or Jannæus is intended.

Jos. Ant. xviii. 4. 3.

to a literal application of the prescriptions of the law about the wife of the high-priest.' Unfortunately, however, the origin of the story was susceptible of a very easy explanation. Upon this the Sadducee Jonathan exclaimed that that was certainly the opinion of all the Pharisees; let the prince only ask them what they considered the proper punishment. They did not propose to punish the insolent slander of their companion with anything more severe than stripes and imprisonment, although the law regulating the privileges of the king had once imposed the penalty of death on such an offence as high treason; and this (relates Josephus) was the immediate cause which led John and his sons to withdraw from the party of the Pharisees. What a great change was thus introduced into the entire administration of the kingdom it is not difficult to estimate. It was a change not merely in the men at the head of affairs, and in a few fundamental principles, but also in the customs and usages of life, for the Sadducees rejected all the practices approved and introduced by the Pharisees which they did not expressly find in the law, and which they considered to have arisen from mere tradition.'

It is, in fine, on the immediate support of the existing situation, the Asmonean house, that we must fix our attention. For the moment nothing seemed to possess more strength or promise a longer duration. It was because they had devoted such intense labour and had been proved in the severest crisis that the Asmoneans, like David of old, had attained supreme power, which came to them unsought and yet, by the inevitable necessity of circumstances, backed by the acclamation and most earnest co-operation of the people. They had not the remotest hostility to the hagiocracy, and in accordance with its spirit they were first of all high-priests and then princes. Lastly, they had no longer to contest the claims of any other house; for Onias2 had already emigrated to Egypt, and was there perfectly contented. Their position as rulers, therefore, was if possible more prosperous and full of brighter promise for a long future than David's had ever been; and in John, with his five blooming sons, it seemed that the perpetuity of their house was secured. But as the elevation under the Maccabees had brought with it no complete new birth of the spirit, and for a long while the age produced nothing better than the Essees, the traces of their noblest efforts were soon obliterated from

See the Alterth. p. 332. The same næus; Jos. Ant. xiii. 13, 5. 2 P. 355 $99. reproach was brought up again from the same quarter against Alexander Jan

the rising generation. The sons of John had only seen the power and prosperity of their father, and the practices of the dominant schools could not have any good effect upon them. This rendered them again all the more accessible to the evil spirit which had for centuries been corrupting the Greek princes of those countries, nor can anything reveal the deep and rapid decline which lay concealed beneath the brilliant surface of the age more clearly than the swift and terrible fall of this ruling house, which had arisen amid every sign of prosperity.1

The position of John himself was, it is true, too firm. Even the hostility of the Pharisees after he had quitted their party could not injure him, and accordingly, as he advanced in age, he was regarded by the people more and more as a holy man and a prophet. He was the object of envy for his rare and threefold good fortune in possessing the high-priesthood, supreme power, and the gift of prophecy. The idea of making himself king, on the other hand, was never seriously entertained by him, for it was not compatible either with the conception of the original theocracy in Israel, of which the hagiocracy was but the reproduction, or with the Messianic hopes which had now been awakened to new life. This was certainly also the view of all the better minds of the age, and John was in no respect disloyal to it. The case was somewhat different with prophecy. In the eyes of the people the high-priesthood naturally appeared to possess somewhat of the prophetic character, and it is easy to understand how this should be gradually attributed to John. Accordingly, it was related that when his two sons were in the field against Antiochus Cyzicenus, he heard a prophetic voice, as he was sacrificing in the temple, announce their victory, and proclaimed the tidings to the listening people." And, it was said, he further anticipated that both his sons, when in power, would be overtaken by misfortune."

3

Pasch. (see above, p. 124 note 1) reduces this number to twenty-seven, and Eusebius, in the Chronicle, to twenty-six. A correct estimate of these various statements must be based on a general chronology of the period. The Séder Olâm Rabbé, cap. xxx. does not name the individual Asmonean and Herodean princes; but it ascribes to the former and to the latter a total of one hundred and three years each. The Seder Olâm Zutta assigns thirtyseven years to John: but for these questions these books are almost devoid of value.

C. THE END OF THE ASMONEANS AND THE HERODEANS.

I. THE SONS OF JOHN HYRCANUS, KINGS ARISTOBULUS I. AND JANNEUS ALEXANDER; ALEXANDRA; B.C. 106-70.

As, in the fluctuations of the dance, the strain of the lute reaches its highest note, and its descent through the whole scale may then be divined beforehand, so is it in the graver dance of human destiny. From the triumph of the Maccabees there was a gradual decline, and the greater the reliance which was placed on either of the three parties which were erroneously looked to for support, the more swiftly was its feebleness evinced.

1. The first symptom which appeared was the gross corruption of the ruling house. With dim prevision of the unfitness of his five sons, John had nominated his wife to the supreme power, for in those days, both in Egypt and Syria, queens often governed better than kings. Only a man, however, could fill the office of high-priest; his eldest son, therefore, Aristobulus,' took the high-priesthood. Scarcely, however, was he installed, when he imitated the Greeks, of whose manners he was so fond,2 and was the first of his house to assume the title of king.3 He threw his mother into prison, and caused her to be starved to death; he also imprisoned his three youngest brothers, and only left his old companion in arms, Antigonus, at liberty. In other respects he was not destitute either of deeper feeling or of courage. By a successful campaign in the north-east, he so completely vanquished the unruly Itureans, that they resolved to adopt circumcision. Like the Nabateans already mentioned, these Itureans were a very old Arab tribe. When the Syrian kingdom fell into irreparable ruin and ultimately broke up in a hundred pieces, each of which aimed at becoming independent, the Itureans rose once more with energy, and in the north-east and north of Palestine they occupied numerous heights and caves, and succeeded in spreading from this quarter in the same way as their kinsmen the Nabateans had formerly advanced from the south-east. From this time, in fact, they formed a small kingdom, whose princes maintained their position through every vicissitude for almost two centuries,

His real name was Judas; Jos. Ant. xx. 10, 3.

2 He was fond of calling himself Philhellên; Jos. Ant. xiii. 11, 3.

According to Strabo, Geogr. xvi. 2, VOL. V.

C C

40, it was his successor who first adopted it, but this statement is certainly not so

correct.

4 P. 351 sqq.

as the Asmoneans did not permanently subdue them.' Their kingdom did not, however, reach the same vigour as that of the Nabateans, as they never rose to the height of the Nabatean culture, and had no more civilisation than the wild Arab tribes of the north; moreover, they were in great request as archers and readily served as mercenaries in foreign armies.2-The course of Aristobulus, however, was destined to be very brief. In the year 106, as the feast of tabernacles was approaching, he lay ill at Jerusalem, when he was induced by the suspicions constantly expressed on the part of his queen and some of his courtiers against his brother Antigonus, who had just returned victorious from the war, to make trial of his fidelity. He desired him to attend unarmed at the castle. (the Baris, on the north side of the temple),3 and gave orders to put him to death if he should present himself armed. His enemies, however, misled him; he came armed and fell innocent. But the thought of having murdered a mother and a brother caused the king such frightful anguish that he died after the first year of his reign. It was as though the Asmonean spirit in him could not yet bear the shame of thus disgracing the dignity of high-priest and king; in this respect, however, he was the last of his house.

2. His childless widow transferred the sovereignty, together with her hand, to the eldest of the three surviving brothers, Jonathan, more generally known by the abbreviated form of his name Jannâi (Jannæus); he preferred, however, to call himself Alexander. He was regarded as the best among the brothers,

7

6

Strabo, Geogr. xvi. 2, 10 sqq.; Cic. Phil. ii. 8.

Virg. Georg. ii. 448. The Roman poets always spell the name correctly, itûr.

On the situation of this castle, see the explicit testimony of Josephus, Bell. Jud. i. 5, 4; cf. above, p. 382.

This was predicted on the same day, so it was said, by an Essee named Judas, Bell. Jud. i. 3, 5; the same story is repeated word for word in Ant. xiii. 11, 2.

According to the law of marriage with a brother's wife. The rule that the high-priest should only marry a virgin was the less regarded in this case as these princes looked on themselves first of all simply as kings.

It is by this abbreviated form, "", that this king is always known in the Talmudic writings, as in the Gemara to Avoda Zara, fol. 50a, to ID, fol. 226, where, at the same time the later popular traditions are adduced about the different

varieties of the Pharisees. The names Johanan and Jonathan were also, it is true, confused at a later day in this shortened form (p. 123 note 1), but even in the Talmudic writings (p. 362), the high-priest Johanan is always kept quite distinct from the king Jannâi. The reference to king Jannai (Gemara top, fol. 66a) of the story of the breach between Hyrcanus and the Pharisees which we find in Josephus (p. 382), is simply a later confusion, not of the names and offices, but of the princes: moreover, the narrative has in this place an entirely traditional air. It was the attempt of a subsequent date to foist all the hatred entertained for the Pharisees on Jannâi alone.

A coin of his was long known, bearing on the obverse the legend ΒΑΙΛΕΩΣ AAEZANAPOT, with the anchor of the Seleucida, on the reverse

in small but clear letters between the spokes of a wheel; see the appendix to Bayer's Vindiciæ, p. ix. Since that time