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sacrifice, in quality of high-priest, upon the altar of burnt-offerings, they threw lemons at his head, calling him a thousand injurious names, and amongst the rest giving him that of "Slave;" a reproach which sufficiently argued, that they looked upon him as unworthy of the crown and pontificate. This was an effect of what Eleazar had presumed to advance; that the mother of Hyrcanus had been a captive. These indignities enraged Alexander to such a degree, that he attacked those insolent people in person, at the head of his guards, and killed six thousand of them. Seeing how much the Jews were disaffected towards him, he was afraid to trust his person any longer to them, and used foreign troops for his guard, whom he caused to come from Pisidia and Cilicia. Of these he formed a body of six thousand men, who attended him every where.

A. M.

3910. Ant. J. C.

94.

A. M.

Aut. J. C.

92.

When Alexander saw the storm which had been raised against him a little appeased by the terror of the revenge he had taken for it, he turned his arms against the enemy abroad. After having obtained some advantages over them, he fell into an ambuscade, wherein he lost the greatest part of his army, and escaped himself with great difficulty. At his return to Jerusalem, the Jews, incensed at this defeat, 3912. revolted against him. They flattered themselves, that they should find him so much weakened and dejected by his late loss, that they should experience no difficulty in completing his destruction, which they. had so long desired. Alexander, who wanted neither application nor valour, and who besides had a more, than common capacity, soon found troops to oppose them. A civil war ensued between him and his subjects, which continued six years, and occasioned great misfortunes to both parties. The rebels were beaten and defeated upon many occasions.

5918. Ant. J. C.

Alexander, having taken a city wherein many of A. M. them had shut themselves up, carried eight hundred of them to Jerusalem, and caused them all to be crucified in one day: when they were fixed to the cross,

86.

A. M. 3925.

he ordered their wives and children to be brought out, and to have their throats cut before their faces, During this cruel execution, the king regaled his wives and concubines in a place from whence they saw all that passed; and this sight was to him and them the principal part of the entertainment. Horrid gratification! This civil war, during the six years that it lasted, had cost the lives of more than fifty thousand men on the side of the rebels.

Alexander, after having put an end to it, undertook many other foreign expeditions with very great success. Upon his return to Jerusalem, he abandoned himself to intemperance and excess of wine, which brought a quartan ague upon him, of which he died at the end of three years, after having reigned twenty-seven.

He left two sons, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus; but he decreed by his will, that Alexandra his wife Ant. J. C. should govern the kingdom during her life, and choose which of her sons she thought fit to succeed her.

79.

A. M.

SECT. III. Reign of Alexandra, the wife of Alexander Jannæus, which continued nine years. Hyrcanus her eldest son is high-priest during that time.

ACCORDING to the advice of her husband, 3926. Alexandra submitted herself and her children to the Ant. J. C. power of the Pharisees, declaring to them, that in doing so, she only acted in conformity to the last will of her husband.

78.

By this step she so well conciliated them, that, forgetting their hatred for the dead, though they had carried it during his life as far as possible, they changed it on a sudden into a respect and veneration

Joseph. Antiq, xiii, 23, 24, & de bell. Jud, i. 4,

for his memory, and instead of the invectives and reproaches which they had always abundantly vented against him, nothing was heard but praises and panegyrics, wherein they exalted immoderately the great actions of Alexander, by which the nation had been aggrandised, and its power, honour, and credit, much augmented. By this means they brought over the people so effectually, whom till then they had always irritated against him, that they celebrated his funcral with greater pomp and magnificence, than that of any of his predecessors; and Alexandra, according to the intent of his will, was confirmed sovereign administratrix of the nation. We see from hence, that a blind and unlimited conformity to the power and will of the Pharisees was with them a substitute for every kind of merit, and made all failings, and even crimes, disappear as effectually as if they had never been; which is very common with those who are fond of ruling.

When that princess saw herself well established, she caused her eldest son Hyrcanus to be received as high-priest: he was then near thirty years of age. According to her promise, she gave the administration of all important affairs to the Pharisees. The first thing they did was to repeal the decree, by which John Hyrcanus, father of the two last kings, had abolished all their traditional constitutions, which were afterwards more generally received than ever. They persecuted with great cruelty all those who had declared themselves their enemies in the preceding reigns, without the queen's being able to prevent them; because she had tied up her own hands, by putting herself into those of the Pharisees. She had seen in her husband's time what a civil war was, and the infinite misfortunes with which it is attended. She was afraid of kindling a new one, and not knowing any other means to prevent it, than by giving way to the violence of those revengeful and inexorable men, she believed it necessary to suffer a less evil, in order to prevent a greater.

A. M.

73.

What we have said upon this head may contribute very much to our having a right notion of the state of the Jewish nation, and of the characters of those who governed it.

The Pharisees still continued their persecutions 3931. against those who had opposed them under the late Ant. J. C. king. They made them accountable for all the cruelties and faults with which they thought proper to blacken his memory. They had already got rid of many of their enemies, under this pretext, and invented every day new articles of accusation to destroy those who gave them most umbrage amongst such as still survived.

The friends and partisans of the late king, seeing that there was no end to these persecutions, and that their destruction was sworn, assembled at last, and came in a body to wait on the queen, with Aristobulus, her second son, at their head. They represented to her the services they had done the late king; their fidelity and attachment to him in all his wars, and in all the difficulties with which he had been involved during the troubles. That it was very hard at present, that under her government, every thing they had done for him should be made criminal, and to see themselves sacrificed to the implacable hatred of their enemies, solely for their adherence to herself and her family. They implored her either to put a stop to such sort of inquiries, or, if that was not in her power, to permit them to retire out of the country, in order to seek an asylum elsewhere: at least they begged her to put them into garrisoned places, where they might find some security against the violence of their enemies.

The queen was as much affected as it was possible to be with the condition she saw them in, and the injustice done them. But it was out of her power to do for them all she desired; for she had given herself masters, by engaging to take no steps without the consent of the Pharisees. How dangerous

Joseph. Antiq xiii. 24. & de bell, Jud. i, 4.

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is it to invest such people with too much authority! They exclaimed that it would be putting a stop to the course of justice, to suspend the inquiries after the culpable; that such a proceeding was what no government ought to suffer, and that therefore they never would accede to it. On the other side, the queen believed that she ought not to give her consent, that the real and faithful friends of her family should abandon their country in such a manner; because she would then lie at the mercy of a turbulent faction without any support, and would have no resource in case of necessity. She resolved therefore upon the third point they had proposed to her, and dispersed them into the places where she had garrisons. She found two advantages resulting from that conduct; the first was that their enemies dared not attack them in those fortresses, where they would have arms in their hands; and the second, that they would always be a body of reserve, upon which she could rely upon occasion in case of any rupture.

A. M.

3934.

70.

Some years after, queen Alexandra fell sick of a very dangerous distemper, which brought her to the point of death. As soon as Aristobulus, her youngest Ant. J.C. son, saw that she could not recover, as he had long formed the design of seizing the crown at her death, he stole out of Jerusalem in the night, with only one domestic, and went to the places, in which, according to a plan he had given them, the friends of his father had been placed in garrison. He was received there with open arms, and in fifteen days' time twenty-two of those towns and castles declared for him, which put him in possession of almost all the forces of the state. The people as well as the army were entirely inclined to declare for him, weary of the cruel administration of the Pharisees, who had governed without controul under Alexandra, and were become insupportable to every one. They came therefore in crowds from all quarters to follow the standards of Aristobulus; in hopes that he would abolish the tyranny of the Pharisees, which could

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