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THE JEWISH WAR.

BOOK I.

CONTAINING THE INTERVAL OF ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS.

FROM THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM BY ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES, TO THE DEATH OF HEROD THE GREAT.

CHAP. I.

How the City Jerusalem was taken, and the Temple pillaged [by Antiochus Epiphanes: As also, concerning the Actions of the Maccabees, Matthias and Judas; and concerning the Death of Judas.

§ 1. Ar the same time that Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, had a quarrel with the sixth Ptolemy about his right to the whole country of Syria, a great sedition fell among the men of power in Judea, and they had a contention about obtaining the government; while each of those that were of dignity could not endure to be subject to their equals. However, Onias, one of the high priests got the better, and cast the sons of Tobias out of the city, who fled to Antiochus and besought him to make use of them for his leaders, and to make an expedition into Judea. The king, being thereto disposed beforehand, complied with them and came upon the Jews with a great army, and took their city by force, and slew a great multitude of those that favoured Ptolemy, and sent out his soldiers to plunder them without mercy. He also spoiled the temple, and put a stop to the constant practice of offering a daily sacrifice of expiation for three years and six months. But Onias the high priest fled to Ptolemy, and received a palace from him in the Nomus of Heliopolis, where he built a city resembling Jeru salem, and a temple that was like* its temple, concerning which we shall speak more in its proper place hereafter.

2. Now Antiochus was not satisfied either with his unexpected taking the city, or with its pillage, or with the great slaughter he had made there; but being overcome with his violent passions, and remembering what he had suffered during the siege, he compelled the Jews to dissolve the laws of their country, and to keep their infants uncircumcised, and to sacrifice swine's flesh upon the altar; against which they all opposed themselves, and the most approved among them were put to death. Bacchides also, who was sent to keep the fortresses, having these wicked commands joined to his own natural barbarity, indulged all sorts of the extremest wickedness, and tormented the worthiest of the inhabitants, man by man, and threatened the city every day with open destruction, till at length he provoked the poor sufferers by the extremity of his wicked doings to avenge themselves.

I see little difference in the several accounts in Josephus about the Egyptian temple Onion, of which large complaints are made by his commentators. Onias, it seems, hoped to have made it very like that at Jerusalem, and of the same dimensions; and so he appears to have really done as far as he was able, and thought proper. Of this temple, see Antiq. B. xiii. ch. iii § 1, 2, 3 and Of the War, B. vii. ch. x. § 3

3. Accordingly, Matthias, the son of Asamoneus, one of the priests who lived n a village called Modin, armed himself, together with his own family, which had five of his own sons in it, and slew Bacchides with daggers; and thereupon. out of the fear of the many garrisons [of the enemy,] he fled to the mountains; and so many of the people followed him, that he was encouraged to come down from the mountains, and to give battle to Antiochus's generals, when he beat them, and drove them out of Judea. So he came to the government by this his success, and became the prince of his own people by their own free consent, and then died, leaving the government to Judas his eldest son.

4. Now Judas, supposing that Antiochus would not lie still, gathered an army out of his own countrymen, and was the first that made a league of friendship with the Romans, and drove Epiphanes out of the country when he had made a second expedition into it, and this by giving him a great defeat there; and when he was warmed by this great success, he made an assault upon the garrison that was in the city, for it had not been cut off hitherto; so he ejected them out of the upper city, and drove the soldiers into the lower, which part of the city was called the Citadel. He then got the temple under his power, and cleansed the whole place, and walled it round about, and made new vessels for sacred ministrations, and brought them into the temple, because the former vessels had been profaned. He also built another altar, and began to offer the sacrifices; and when the city had already received its sacred constitution again, Antiochus died; whose son Antiochus succeeded him in the kingdom, and in his hatred to the Jews also.

5. So this Antiochus got together fifty thousand footmen, and five thousand horsemen, and four score elephants, and marched through Judea, into the moun. tainous parts. He then took Bethsura, which was a small city; but at a place called Bethzacharias, where the passage was narrow, Judas met him with his army. However, before the forces joined battle, Judas's brother Eleazar, seeing the very highest of the elephants adorned with a large tower, and with military trappings of gold to guard him, and supposing that Antiochus himself was upon him, he ran a great way before his own army, and, cutting his way through the enemies' troops, he got up to the elephant; yet could he not reach him who seemed to be the king, by reason of his being so high; but still he ran his weapon into the belly of the beast, and brought him down upon himself, and was crushed to death, having done no more than attempted great things, and showed that he preferred glory before life. Now he that governed the elephant was but a private nian; and had he proved to be Antiochus, Eleazar had performed nothing more by this bold stroke than that it might appear he chose to die, when he had he bare hope of thereby doing a glorious action; nay, this disappointment proved an omen to his brother [Judas] how the entire battle would end. It is true that the Jews fought it out bravely for a long time, but the king's forces being superior in number, and having fortune on their side, obtained the victory. And when a great many of his men were slain, Judas took the rest with him, and fled to the toparchy of Gophna. So Antiochus went to Jerusalem, and stayed there but a few days, for he wanted provisions, and so he went his way. He left indeed a garrison behind him, such as he thought sufficient to keep the place, but drew the rest of his army off, to take their winter quarters in Syria.

6. Now after the king was departed, Judas was not idle; for as many of his own nation came to him, so did he gather those that had escaped out of the battle together, and gave battle again to Antiochus's generals at a village called Adasa: and being too hard for his enemies in the battle, and killing a great number of them, he was at last himself slain also. Nor was it many days afterward that his brother John had a plot laid against him by Antiochus's party, and was slain by them.

CHAP. II.

Concerning the Successors of Judas, who were Jonathan, and Simeon, and
John Hyrcanus.

1. WHEN Jonathan, who was Judas's brother, succeeded him, he behaved himself with great circumspection in other respects with relation to his own people; and he corroborated his authority by preserving his friendship with the Romans. He also made a league with Antiochus's son. Yet was not all this sufficient for his security; for the tyrant Trypho, who was guardian to Antiochus's son, laid a plot against him; and, besides that, endeavoured to take off his friends, and caught Jonathan by a wile, as he was going to Ptolemais to Antiochus, with a few persons in his company, and put him in bonds, and then made an expedition against the Jews; but when he was afterward driven away by Simeon, who was Jonathan's brother, and was enraged at his defeat, he put Jonathan to death.

2. However, Simeon managed the public affairs after a courageous manner, and took Gazara, and Joppa, and Jamnia, which were cities in the neighbourhood. He also got the garrison under, and demolished the citadel. He was afterward an auxiliary to Antiochus against Trypho, whom he besieged in Dora, before he went on his expedition against the Medes: yet could not he make the king ashamed of his ambition, though he had assisted him in killing Trypho; for it was not long ere Antiochus sent Cendebeus his general with an army to lay waste Judea, and to subdue Simeon: yet he, though he were now in years, conducted the war as if he were a much younger man. He also sent his sons with a band of strong men against Antiochus, while he took part of the army himself with him, and fell upon him from another quarter: he also laid a great many men in ambush in many places of the mountains, and was superior in all his attacks upon them; and when he had been conqueror after so glorious a manner, he was made high priest, and also freed the Jews from the dominion of the Macedonians, after a hundred and seventy years of the empire [of Seleucus.]

3. This Simeon also had a plot laid against him, and was slain at a feast by his son-in-law Ptolemy, who put his wife and two sons into prison, and sent some persons to kill John, who was also called Hyrcanus. But when the young man was informed of their coming beforehand, he made haste to get to the city, as having a great confidence in the people there, both on account of the memory of the glorious actions of his father, and of the hatred they could not but bear to the injustice of Ptolemy. Ptolemy also made an attempt to get into the city by another gate, but was repelled by the people, who had just then admitted of Hyrca. nus; so he retired presently to one of the fortresses that were above Jericho, which was called Dagon. Now when Hyrcanus had received the high priest. hood, which his father had held before, and had offered sacrifice to God, he made great haste to attack Ptolemy, that he might afford relief to his mother and brethren.

4. So he laid siege to the fortress, and was superior to Ptolemy in other respects, but was overcome by him as to the just affection [he had for his relations]; for when Ptolemy was distressed, he brought forth his mother and his brethren, and set them upon the wall, and beat them with rods in every body's sight, and threatened, that, unless he would go away immediately; he would * Why this John the son of Simeon, the high priest, and governor of the Jews, was called Hyrcanus, Josephus no where informs us; nor is he called other than John at the end of the first book of the Maccabees. However, Sextus Senensis; when he gives us an epitome of the Greek version of the book here abridged by Josephus or of the chronicles of this John Hyrcanus, then extant, assures us that he was cal led Hyrcanus, from his conquest of one of that name. Šee Authent. Rec. Part. i. p. 207. But of this younger Antiochus, see Dean Aldrich's note here.

throw them down headlong; at which sight Hyrcanus's commiseration and coucern were too hard for his anger. But his mother was not dismayed, neither at the stripes she received, nor at the death with which she was threatened; but stretched out her hands, and prayed her son not to be moved with the injuries that she suffered, to spare the wretch; since it was to her better to die by the means of Ptolemy, than to live ever so long provided he might be punished for the injuries he had done to their family. Now John's case was this.When he considered the courage of his mother, and heard her entreaty, he set about his attacks; but when he saw her beaten, and torn to pieces with the stripes, he grew feeble, and was entirely overcome by his affections. And as the seige was delayed by this means, the year of rest came on, upon which the Jews rest every seventh year, as they do on every seventh day. On this year, therefore, Ptolemy was freed from being besieged, and slew the brethren of John, with their mother, and fled to Zeno, who was also called Cotylas, who was the tyrant of Philadelphia.

5. And now Antiochus was so angry at what he had suffered from Simeon, that he made an expedition into Judea, and sat down before Jerusalem, and besieged Hyrcanus; but Hyrcanus opened the sepulchre of David, who was the richest of all kings, and took thence about three thousand talents in money, and induced Antiochus, by the promise of three thousand talents, to raise the siege. Moreover, he was the first of the Jews that had money enough, and began to hire foreign auxiliaries also.

6. However, at another time, when Antiochus was gone upon an expedition against he Medes, and so gave Hyrcanus an opportunity of being revenged upon him, he immediately made an attack upon the cities of Syria, as thinking, what proved to be the case with them, that he should find them empty of good troops. So he took Medaba and Samea, with the towns in their neighbourhood, as also Shechem and Gerizzim, and besides these [he subdued] the nation of the Chutheans, who dwelt round about that temple which was built in imitation of the temple at Jerusalem; he also took a great many other cities of Idumea, whith Adoreon and Marissa.

7. He also proceeded as far as Samaria, where is now the city Sebaste, which was built by Herod the king, and encompassed it all round with a wall, and set his sons, Aristobulus and Antigonus, over the siege, who pushed it on so hard, that a famine so far prevailed within the city, that they were forced to eat what never was esteemed food. They also invited Antiochus, who was called Cyzice KELS, to come to their assistance; whereupon he got ready, and complied with their invitation, but was beaten by Aristobulus and Antigonus; and, indeed, he was pursued as far as Scythopolis by these brethren, and fled away from them. So they returned back to Samaria, and shut the multitude again within the wall; and when they had taken the city, they demolished it and made slaves of its inhabitants. And as they had still great success in their undertakings, they did not suffer their zeal to cool, but marched with an army as far as Scythopolis, and made an incursion upon it, and laid waste all the country that lay within Mount Carmel.

8. But then these successes of John and of his sons made them be envied, and occasioned a sedition in the country; and many there were who got together and would not be at rest till they brake out into open war, in which war they were beaten. So John lived the rest of his life very happily, and administered the government after a most extraordinary manner, and this for thirty-three entire years together. He died, leaving five sons behind him. He was certainly a very happy man, and afforded no occasion to have any complaint made of fortune on his account. He it was who alone had three of the most desirable things in the world, the government of his nation, and the high priesthood, and the gift of prophecy for the Deity conversed with him, and he was not ignorant of any thing that was to come afterward, insomuch that he foresaw and foretold that his two

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eldest sons would not continue masters of the government; and it will highly deserve our narration, to describe their catastrophe, and how far inferior these mer. were to their father in felicity.

CHAP. III.

How Aristobulus was the first that put a Diadem about his Head, and, after he had put his Mother and Brother to Death, died himself, when he had reigned

no more than a Year.

1. For after the death of their father, the elder of them, Aristobulus, changed the government into a kingdom, and was the first that put a diadem about his head, four hundred seventy and one years and three months after our people came down into this country, when they were set free from the Babylonian sla very. Now of his brethren he appeared to have an affectior. for Antigonus, who was next to him, and made him his equal: but for the rest, he bound them, and put them in prison. He also put his mother in bonds, for her contesting the government with him; for John had left her to be the governess of the public affairs. He also proceeded to that degree of barbarity as to cause her to be pined to death in prison.

2. But vengeance circumvented him in the affair of his brother Antigonus, whom he loved, and whom he made his partner in the kingdom; for he slew him by the means of the calumnies which ill men about the palace contrived against him. At first, indeed, Aristobulus would not believe their reports, partly out of the af fection he had for his brother, and partly because he thought that a great part of these tales were owing to the envy of the relaters: however, as Antigonus came once in a splendid manner from the army to that festival, wherein our ancient custom is to make tabernacles for God, it happened in those days that Aristobulus was sick, and that, at the conclusion of the feast, Antigonus came up to it, with his armed men about him; and this when he was adorned in the finest manner possible, and that, in a great measure, to pray to God on the behalf of his brother. Now at this very time it was that these ill men came to the king, and told lum in what a pompous manner the armed men came, and with what insolence Antigonus marched, and that such his insolence was too great for a private person; and that, accordingly, he was come with a great band of men to kill him; for that he could not endure this bare enjoyment of royal honour, when it was in his power to take the kingdom himself.

3. Now Aristobulus, by degrees and unwillingly, gave credit to these accusations: accordingly, he took care not to discover his suspicion openly, though he provided to be secure against any accidents: so he placed the guards of his body in a certain dark subterranean passage; for he lay sick in a place called formerly the Citadel, though afterwards its name was changed to Antonia; and he gave orders, that if Antigonus came unarmed, they should let him alone; but if he came to him in his armour, they should kill him. He also sent some to let him know beforehand, that he should come unarmed. But, upon this occasion, the queen very cunningly contrived the matter with those that plotted his ruin; for she persuaded those that were sent to conceal the king's message: but to tell Antigonus, how his brother had heard he had got a very fine suit of armour, made with fine martial ornaments, in Galilee; and because his present sickness hin. dered him from coming, and seeing all that finery, he very much desired to see him now in his armour; because, said he in a little time thou art going away from me.

4. As soon as Antigonus heard this, the good temper of his brother not allowing hin to suspect any harm from him, he came along with his armour on, to show it

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