In their despair--for properly speaking they
were not national fanatics but only egoistic politicians--they
ultimately made common cause with Antigonus the son of
Aristobulus, and threw themselves into the arms of the Parthians,
perceiving the interests of the Romans and of Herod to be
inseparable (40). Fortune at first seemed to have declared in
favour of the pretender. The masses unanimously took his side;
Phasael committed suicide in prison; with a single blow Herod was
stripped of all his following and made a helpless fugitive. He
took refuge in Rome, however, where he was named king of Judaea
by the senate, and after a somewhat protracted war he finally,
with the help of the legions of Sosius, made himself master of
Jerusalem (37). The captive Antigonus was beheaded at Antioch.
King Herod began his reign by reorganising the synedrium; he
ordered the execution of forty-five of its noblest members, his
most zealous opponents. These were the Sadducaean notables who
long had headed the struggle against the Idumaean interlopers.
Having thus made away with the leaders of the Jerusalem
aristocracy, he directed his efforts to the business of corrupting
the rest.
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