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After his return from this carnage he was grossly insulted by a mob at home, while he was offering the usual sacrices on the feast of tabernacles. But he made the people pay dearly for it, for he fell upon them with his soldiers, and slew six thousand. And from this time he took into his pay six thousand mercenaries from Pisidia and Cilicia, who always attended his person, and kept off the people while he officiated.

B. C. 101. All being again quieted at home, Alexander marched against the Moabites and Ammonites, and made them tributaries. In his return he took possession of Amathus, which Theodorus had evacuated; but he lost most of his army; and had like to have lost his own life in an ambuscade which Thedus, an Arabian king, had laid for him near Gadara. This raised fresh discontents among his subjects, and new troubles at home; which were attended with the most unheard-of barbarities. They were not able to overpower him: but his wickedness had so provoked them that nothing but his blood could satisfy them; and at length, being assisted by Demetrius Euchærus, king of Damascus, they entirely routed him, so that he was forced to consult his own safety by fleeing to the mountains.

His misfortune was the cause of six thousand of his rebel subjects deserting him; which, when Demetrius perceived, he withdrew and left the revolters to fight their own battle. After this separation Alexander gained several advantages; and at last having cut the major part off in a decisive battle, he took eight hundred of the rebels in Bethome, whom he carried to Jerusalem, and having first killed their wives and children before their faces, he ordered them all to be crucified on one day, before him and his wives and concubines, whom he had invited to a feast at the place of execution. Then, resolving to revenge himself on the king of Damascus, he made war on him for three years successively, and took several places: when returning home, he was received with great respect by his subjects.

His next expedition was against the castle of Ragaba in the country of the Gerasens, where he was seized with a quartan ague, which proved his death, B. C. 79. His queen Alexandra, by his own advice, concealed it till the castle was taken; and then, carrying him to Jerusalem, she gave his body to the leaders of the Pharisees, to be disposed of as they should think proper; and told them, as her husband had appointed her regent during the minority of her children, she would do nothing in the administration without their advice and help.

This address to the Pharisees so much gained their esteem, that they not only settled the queen dowager in the government,

but were very lavish in their encomiums on her deceased husband, whom they honoured with more than ordinary pomp and solemnity at his funeral.

The Pharisees having now the management of the queen regent, and of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, her sons by Alexander, had all the laws against Pharisaism repealed and abolished, recalled all the exiles, and demanded justice against those that had advised the crucifixion of the eight hundred rebels.

The queen made her eldest son Hyrcanus highpriest. But Aristobulus was not contented to live a private life; and therefore as soon as his mother seemed to decline, he meditated in what manner he might usurp the sovereignty from his brother, at her decease: and he had taken such measures beforehand, that upon the death of his mother he found himself strong enough to attempt the crown, though Alexander had declared Hyrcanus her successor. The two armies met in the plains of Jericho ; but Hyrcanus being deserted by most of his forces, was obliged to resign his crown and pontificate to Aristobulus, and promise to live peaceably upon his private fortune.

This resignation was a subject of great discontent to some of Hyrcanus's courtiers, among whom was Antipater, father to Herod the Great; who persuaded Hyrcanus to fly to Aretas king of Arabia, who, on certain conditions, supplied him with fifty thousand men, with which Hyrcanus entered Judea, and gained a complete victory over Aristobulus. But while he besieged him in the Temple, Aristobulus, with the promise of a large sum of money, engaged Pompey, the general of the Roman army then before Damascus, to oblige Aretas to withdraw his forces: but Aristobulus, though he was for the present delivered from his brother's rage, prevaricated so with Pompey, that he at last confined Aristobulus in chains, took Jerusalem sword in hand, retrenched the dignity and power of the principality, destroyed the fortifications, ordered an annual tribute to be paid to the Romans, and restored Hyrcanus to the pontificate, and made him prince of the country, but would not permit him to wear the diadem.

Pompey having thus settled the government of Judea, returned in his way to Rome with Aristobulus, his sons Alexander and Antigonus, and two of his daughters, to adorn his triumph.

Alexander found means to escape by the way, and about three years after arrived in Judea, and raised some disturbances: but he was defeated in all his attempts by Gabinius, the Roman governor in Syria; who, after this, coming to Jerusalem, confirmed Hyrcanus in the highpriesthood, but removed the civil

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administration from the Sanhedrim into five courts of justice of his own erecting, according to the number of five provinces, into which he had divided the whole land.

When Aristobulus had lain five years prisoner at Rome, he, with his son, escaped into Judea, and endeavoured to raise fresh trouble but Gabinius soon took them again; and, being remanded to Rome, the father was kept close confined, but the children were released.

It was about this time (B. C. 48,) that the civil war between Pompey and Cæsar broke out; and when Aristobulus was on the point of setting out by Cæsar's interest, to take the command of an army in order to secure Judea from Pompey's attempts, he was poisoned by some of Pompey's party.

When Cæsar was returned from the Alexandrian war, he was much solicited to depose Hyrcanus in favour of Antigonus, the surviving son of Aristobulus: but Cæsar not only confirmed to Hyrcanus the highpriesthood and principality of Judea, and to his family in a perpetual succession; but he abolished the form of government lately set up by Gabinius, restored it to its ancient form, and appointed Antipater procurator of Judea under him.

Antipater, who was a man of great penetration, made his son Phasael governor of the country about Jerusalem; and his son Herod governor of Galilee.

Soon after this appointment, Herod, who was of a boisterous temper, having seized upon one Hezekiah, a ring-leader of a gang of thieves, and some of his men that infested his territories, he put them to death. This was presently looked upon as a breach of duty to the Sanhedrim, before whom he was summoned to appear. But, lest the sentence of that court should pass upon him, he fled to Sextus Cæsar, the Roman prefect of Syria at Damascus; and, having with a sum of money obtained of him the government of Colosyria, where having raised an army, he marched into Judea, and would have revenged the indignity which he said the Sanhedrim and highpriest had cast upon him, had not his father and brother prevailed with him to retire for the present.

While Julius Cæsar lived, the Jews enjoyed great privileges, but his untimely death, (B. C. 44,) by the villanous and ungrateful hands of Brutus, Cassius, &c. in the senate-bouse, as he was preparing for an expedition against the Parthians to revenge country's wrong, delivered them up as a prey to every hungry general of Rome. Cassius immediately seized upon Syria, and exacted above seven hundred talents of silver from the Jews.

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And the envy and villany of Malicus, who was a natural Jew, and the next in office under Antipater, an Idumean, rent the state into horrid faction. Malicus bribed the highpriest's butler to poison his friend Antipater, to make way for himself to be the next in person to Hyrcanus. Herod, making sure of Cassius, by obtaining his leave and assistance to revenge his father's death, took the first opportunity to have him murdered by the Roman garrison at Tyre.

The friends of Malicus, having engaged the highpriest and Felix the Roman general at Jerusalein on their side, resolved to revenge his death on the sons of Antipater. All Jerusalem was in uproar; Herod was sick at Damascus; so that the whole power and fury of the assailants fell upon Phasael, who defended himself very strenuously, and drove the tumultuous party out of the city. As soon as Herod was able, the two brothers presently quelled the faction; and had not Hyrcanus made his peace by giving Herod his grand-daughter Mariamne in marriage, they certainly would have shown their resentment of the highpriest's behaviour with more severity.

Again, this faction was not so totally extinguished, but that several principal persons of the Jewish nation, upon the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, accused Phasael and Herod to the conqueror, Mark Anthony, of usurping the government from Hyrcanus. But the brothers had so much interest with the conqueror that he rejected the complaints of the deputies, made them both tetrarchs, and committed all the affairs of Judea to their administration: and, to oblige the Jews to obey his decision in this affair, he retained fifteen of the deputies as hostages for the people's fidelity, and would have put them to death had not Herod begged their lives.

The Jews, however, when Anthony arrived at Tyre, sent one thousand deputies with the like accusations; which he, looking upon as a daring tumult, ordered his soldiers to fall upon them, so that some were killed and many wounded. But upon Herod's going to Jerusalem the citizens revenged this affront in the same manner upon his retinue; the news whereof so enraged Anthony, that he ordered the fifteen hostages to be immediately put to death, and threatened severe revenge against the whole faction. But after that Mark Anthony was returned to Rome, the Parthians, at the solicitation of Antigonus the son of Aristobulus, who had promised them a reward of a thousand talents and eight hundred of the most beautiful women in the country, to set him on the throne of Judea, entered that country, and being joined by the factions and discontented Jews, (B. C. 37,) took Jerusalem with

out resistance, took Phasael and Hyrcanus, and put them in chains: but Herod escaped under the cover of night, and deposited his mother, sister, wife, and his wife's mother, with severa} other relations and friends in the impregnable fortress Massada, near the lake Asphaltites, under the care of his brother Joseph, who was obliged to go to Rome to seek protection and relief.

In the mean time Antigonus remained in possession of all the country, and was declared king of Judea. The Parthians delivered Hyrcanus and Phasael to Antigonus; upon which Phasael, being so closely hand-cuffed and ironed that he foresaw his ignominious death approaching, dashed his own brains out against the wall of the prison. Antigonus cut off the ears of Hyrcanus, to incapacitate him from the high priesthood, and returned him again to the Parthians, who left him at Seleucia, in their return to the East.

Herod on this occasion served himself so well on the friendship which had been between his father and himself with the Roman general Mark Anthony, and the promise of a round sum of money, that he in seven days' time obtained a senatorial decree, constituting him king of Judea, and declaring Antigonus an enemy to the Roman state. He immediately left Rome, landed at Ptolemais, raised forces, and being aided with Roman auxiliaries, by order of the senate, he reduced greater part of the country, took Joppa, relieved Massada, stormed the castle of Ressa, and must have taken Jerusalem also had not the Roman commanders who were directed to assist him, been bribed by Antigonus, and treacherously obstructed his success. But when Herod perceived their collusion, he, for the present, satisfied himself with the reduction of Galilee; and hearing of Anthony's besieging Samosata on the Euphrates, went in person to him to represent the ill treatment he had met with from the generals Ventidius and Silo, whom he had commanded to serve him.

Upon his departure, Herod left the command of his forces to his brother Joseph, with charge to remain upon the defensive. But Joseph, contrary to orders, attempting to reduce Jericho, was slain, and most of his men were cut to pieces. And thus Herod again lost Galilee and Idumea.

Mark Antony granted all he requested; and though at first the army which Anthony had spared him, was roughly handled, and he himself wounded as he approached Jerusalem to revenge his brother's death, he afterwards slew Pappus, Antigonus's general, and entirely defeate his army; and in the next campaign, after a siege of several months, Herod, assisted by Socius, the Roman general, took it by storm. The soldiers ex

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