which finally surrendered, after Alexander had incurred
immense losses.

(M243) While this priest-king was celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, a
meeting, incited by the Pharisaic party, broke out, which resulted in the
slaughter of ten thousand people. While invading the country to the east
of the Jordan, the rebellion was renewed, and the nation, for six years,
suffered all the evils of civil war. Routed in a battle with the Syrian
monarch, whose aid the insurgents had invoked, he was obliged to flee to
the mountains; but recovering his authority, at the head of sixty thousand
men,--which shows the power of Judea at this period,--he marched upon
Jerusalem, and inflicted a terrible vengeance, eight hundred men being
publicly crucified, and eight thousand more forced to abandon the city.
Under his iron sway, the country recovered its political importance, for
his kingdom comprised the greater part of Palestine. He died, after a
turbulent reign of twenty-seven years, B.C. 77, invoking his queen to
throw herself into the arms of the Pharisaic party, which advice she
followed, as it was the most powerful and popular.

(M244) The high priesthood devolved on his eldest son, Hyrcanus II., while
the reins of government were held by his queen, Alexandra. She reigned
vigorously and prosperously for nine years, punishing the murderers of the
eight hundred Pharisees who had been executed.

Hyrcanus was not equal to his task amid the bitterness of party strife.
His brother Aristobulus, belonging to the party of the Sadducees, and who
had taken Damascus, was popular with the people, and compelled his elder
brother to abdicate in his favor, and an end came to Pharisaic rule.

(M245) But now another family appears upon the stage, which ultimately
wrested the crown from the Asmodean princes. Antipater, a noble Idumean,
was the chief minister of the feeble Hyrcanus. He incited, from motives of
ambition, the deposed prince to reassert his rights, and influenced by his
counsels, he fled to Aretas, the king of Arabia, whose capital, Petra, had
become a great commercial emporium. Aretas, Antipater, and Hyrcanus,
marched with an army of fifty thousand men against Aristobulus, who was
defeated, and fled to Jerusalem.

(M246) At this time Pompey was pursuing his career of conquests in the
East, and both parties invoked his interference, and both offered enormous
bribes. This powerful Roman was then at Damascus, receiving the homage and
tr