History of the Jews, Vol. 2 (of 6). Graetz Heinrich
with unbounded enthusiasm. Sufficient arms could not be procured for the volunteers who flocked to his camp. He was joined by Pitholaus, a Judæan commander, who had once served as a general to Hyrcanus. Aristobulus placed himself at the head of 8000 men, and began immediately to regarrison the citadel of Alexandrion, whence he hoped to exhaust the Romans by guerrilla warfare. But his impatient temper led him into open battle, in which a large part of his army was utterly destroyed, and the rest scattered. Still unsubdued, Aristobulus threw himself with the remnant of his followers into the citadel of Machærus, but at the approach of the Romans with their battering-rams he was obliged to capitulate, and for the second time was sent with his sons into captivity at Rome (56).
Another insurrection, organized by his son Alexander, who had obtained his freedom from the then all-powerful Pompey, was doomed to come to as disastrous a termination. Galled by the oppression of the Governor of Syria, the inhabitants of that unfortunate country sent an army of 30,000 men to join Alexander. They commenced by killing all the Romans who came in their way, Gabinius's troops not being strong enough to oppose them. But the Governor craftily succeeded in detaching some of Alexander's followers from his ranks, and then tempted the Judæan prince into open battle. At Mount Tabor (in 55), the Judæans were signally defeated.
Meanwhile the three most eminent men of Rome – Julius Cæsar, distinguished by his brilliant sagacity, Pompey by his martial renown, and Crassus by his boundless wealth – had agreed to break the power of the Senate, and to manage the affairs of the State according to their own will. The triumvirs began by dividing the fairest lands into provinces, which they separately appropriated. Syria fell to the share of Crassus, who was intensely avaricious in spite of his vast riches. Judæa from this time on was annexed to Syria quite as a matter of course. Crassus went out of his way, when marching against the Parthians, to enter Jerusalem, being tempted thither by the rich treasury of the Temple. He made no secret of his wish to seize upon the two thousand talents that Pompey had spared. In order to satisfy his greed, a pious priest, Eleazer, delivered up to him a solid bar of gold, the existence of which, hidden as it was in a hollow staff of curiously carved wood, had been unknown to the priests. Upon the receipt of this gift, Crassus swore solemnly that he would spare the treasury of the Temple. But when was a promise known to be binding that was made by a Roman to a Judæan? He took the golden bar, the two thousand talents, and all the golden vessels of the Temple, which were worth another eight thousand talents (54). Laden with these and other spoils of the Sanctuary, Crassus marched against the Parthians; but the Roman arms had always failed to subdue this people. Crassus was slain, and his army was so entirely disabled that his legate, Cassius Longinus, returned to Syria with scarcely the tenth part of the army of one hundred thousand men (53). The Parthians pursued the weakened army, and the Syrians, weary of the Roman yoke, lent them secret aid. To the Judæans this seemed an auspicious moment also for their own emancipation.
It fell to Pitholaus to call the army together, which he led against Cassius. Fortune, however, always deserted the Judæan arms when they were turned against the Romans. Shut up in Tarichea on the lake of Tiberias, the troops were obliged to surrender. Upon the urgent demand of Antipater, Pitholaus was sentenced to death by Cassius, and thirty thousand Judæan warriors were sold into slavery (52).
But the imprisoned Aristobulus looked forward once again to the hope of placing himself upon his father's throne and of banishing Antipater into obscurity. Julius Cæsar, the greatest man that Rome ever produced, had openly defied the Senate, and broken with his associate Pompey. The bitter strife between the two Roman potentates lit the torch of war in the most distant provinces of the Roman empire. Cæsar had given Aristobulus his freedom, and in order to weaken Pompey's influence, had sent him with two legions to Palestine to create a diversion in his favor. But the partisans of Pompey contrived to poison the Judæan prince. His followers embalmed his body in honey and carried it to Jerusalem, where it was buried beside the bodies of the Hasmonæan princes. His eldest son, the gallant Alexander, was decapitated by order of Scipio, a follower of Pompey, at Antioch. The widow of Aristobulus and his surviving son Antigonus found protection with Ptolemy, prince of Chalcis, whose son Philippion had fallen in love with Alexandra, the daughter of Aristobulus, and had brought her to his father's court. But Ptolemy, out of criminal love to his own daughter-in-law, caused his son to be murdered and married the widow.
Antipater continued to be Pompey's faithful ally, until the Roman general met with a miserable end in Egypt. Then the Idumæan offered his services to Cæsar. When the great general found himself in Egypt, without sufficient forces, without news from Rome, in the midst of a hostile population, Antipater evinced a touching eagerness to help him, which did not remain unrewarded. He provided the army of Cæsar's ally, Mithridates, king of Pergamus, with all necessaries, and sent him a contingent of Judæan troops; he aided him in conquering Pelusium, and conciliated the Egyptian-Judæans who had taken the part of his opponent. He was now well able to forego the favor of Hyrcanus. To no effect did Antigonus, the last surviving son of Aristobulus, seek an interview with Cæsar, in which he dwelt upon his father's and his brother's loyalty to the Roman general; Antipater had but to display his wounds, which he had received in the very last campaign, to gain the victory over his rival. Cæsar, who was an astute reader of men, and who had himself revolted from the legitimate order of things, knew well enough how to value Antipater's loyalty and energy, and did not support the rightful claims of Antigonus. Out of consideration for Antipater (47), Hyrcanus was proclaimed high priest and ethnarch, and to Judæa was given some relief from her burdens. The walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt, the provinces that formerly belonged to Judæa, namely, Galilee, the towns in the plains of Jezreel, and Lydda, were once more made part of her territory. The Judæans were no longer forced to provide winter quarters for the Roman legions, although the landowners were obliged to give the fourth part of their harvest every second year to the Roman troops.
Cæsar was altogether benevolent to the Judæans, and rewarded them for their loyalty. To the Alexandrian Judæans he granted many privileges, confirming their long-enjoyed equality with the Greeks, and permitting them to be governed by a prince of their own (Ethnarch). Money was again liberally provided for the Temple. Cæsar enabled the supplies to reach their destination. He prevented the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor from molesting the Judæans of those provinces, from summoning them before the courts of justice on the Sabbath, from interfering with their public assemblages and the building of their synagogues, and in general from disturbing them in their religious observances (47–44). Cæsar must also have extended his generosity to the Judæan community in Rome, for they evinced the warmest devotion to his memory.
But in spite of all these favors, the Judæan nation as a whole remained cold and distant. The foreign communities of Judæans might bless Cæsar as their benefactor, but the Palestinean Judæans could see in him only the Roman, the patron of the hated Idumæan. So defiant was the attitude of the nation that Antipater felt himself compelled to threaten the disaffected with the triple wrath of Cæsar, of Hyrcanus and of himself, whilst he promised liberal bounty to the obedient and loyal Judæans. Meanwhile, a small body of men taken from the army of Aristobulus had assembled under the command of Ezekias upon one of the mountain heights of Galilee, where they only awaited an opportune moment for raising the standard of revolt against Rome. The Romans, it is true, only looked upon this little army as a band of robbers, and upon Ezekias as a robber chieftain, but to the Judæans they were the avengers of their honor and their freedom. For they were deeply mortified that Antipater had placed the reins of government in the hands of his sons, and that he cared only for the growing power of his house. Of the four sons born to him by Kypros, the daughter of the King of Arabia, he proclaimed Phasael, the eldest, Governor of Jerusalem and Judæa, and the second, Herod, a youth of the age of twenty, Governor of Galilee.
This prince was destined to become the evil genius of the Judæan nation; it was he who brought her as a bound captive to Rome; it was he who placed his feet triumphantly upon her neck. Like an ominous cloud weighted down with misfortune, he seems from the very first to have thrown a dark shadow upon the life of the nation, which, as it slowly but surely advanced, quenched all light in the gathering darkness and withered all growth, until nothing remained but a scene of desolation. True to his father's policy, Herod began by basely flattering Rome and by wounding the Judæan spirit. In order to gain favor with Cæsar, and also to establish the security of his family, he undertook a campaign against the followers of Ezekias; he captured the leader