Jerusalem. The Biography

Judah, assuming command in the hills around Jerusalem, defeated three Syrian armies in a row. Antiochus initially did not take the Jewish revolt seriously for he marched east to conquer Iraq and Persia, ordering his viceroy Lysias to crush the rebels. But Judah defeated him too.
    Even Antiochus, campaigning in faraway Persia, realized that Judah’s victories threatened his empire, and cancelled the terror. The Jews, hewrote to the pro-Greek members of the Sanhedrin, could ‘use their own proper meats and observe their own laws’. But he was too late, and soon afterwards Antiochus Epiphanes suffered an epileptic fit and fell dead from his chariot. 30 Judah had already earned the heroic moniker that would give its name to a dynasty: the Hammer.

66–40 BC
     
    POMPEY IN THE HOLY OF HOLIES
     
    When Queen Salome died, her sons fought. Hyrcanus II was defeated near Jericho by his brother Aristobulos II. The brothers were reconciled, embracing before the Jerusalemites in the Temple, and Aristobulos became king. Hyrcanus retired, but he was advised and controlled by a cunning outsider, Antipater. This Idumean potentate * was the future. His son would become King Herod. Their talented and depraved family would dominate Jerusalem for over a century and essentially create the Temple Mount and Western Wall as they are today.
    Antipater helped Hyrcanus flee to Petra, the ‘rose red city half as old as time’, the Nabataean Arab capital. King Aretas (Harith in Arabic), fabulously rich from the Indian spice trade and related to Antipater’s Arab wife, helped them defeat King Aristobulos, who fled back to Jerusalem. The Arab king gave chase, besieging Aristobulos in the fortified Temple Mount. But all this sound and fury signified nothing, because to the north Pompey was setting up headquarters in Damascus. Gnaeus Pompeius, the most powerful man in Rome, was a maverick commander who without official position had led his private army to victory in the Roman civil wars in Italy, Sicily and North Africa. He had celebrated two Triumphs and won vast wealth. He was a cautious general with a cherubic face – ‘nothing was more delicate than Pompey’s cheeks’ – but this was deceptive: Pompey was, wrote the historian Sallust, ‘honest in face, shameless in heart’, and his early sadism and greed in the civil wars had earned him the nickname ‘the young butcher’. Now he had established himself in Rome but the laurels of a Roman strongman required constant refreshment. His nickname ‘Magnus’ – the Great – was at least partly sarcastic. As a boy he had worshipped Alexander the Great, and hisHomeric, heroic kingship, along with the unconquered provinces and prizes of the East, would henceforth prove irresistible to every Roman oligarch on the make.
    In 64 BC , Pompey terminated the Seleucid kingdom, annexed Syria and was happy to mediate between the warring Jews. Delegations arrived from Jerusalem representing not only both the feuding brothers but also the Pharisees, who begged Pompey to rid them of Maccabeans. Pompey ordered both princes to await his judgement, but Aristobulos, who had not quite grasped the steely power of Rome, rashly double-crossed him.
    Pompey swooped on Jerusalem. He captured Aristobulos, but the Maccabean’s retainers occupied the fortified Temple Mount, breaking down the bridge that linked it to the Upper City. Pompey, encamped north of the Bethesda Pool, besieged the Temple for three months, using catapults to bombard it. Once again taking advantage of Jewish piety – it was the Sabbath and a fast – the Romans stormed the Temple from the north, cutting the throats of the priests who guarded the altar. Jews set alight their own houses; others threw themselves from the battlements. Twelve thousand were killed. Pompey destroyed fortifications, abolished the monarchy, confiscated most of the Maccabean kingdom and appointed Hyrcanus as high priest, ruling just Judaea with his minister Antipater.
    Pompey could not resist the opportunity of seeing inside the famous Holy of Holies. The Romans were intrigued by Eastern rites yet proud of their many gods and disdainful of the primitive superstition of Jewish monotheism. The Greeks sneered that the Jews in secret worshipped a golden ass’s head or fattened up a human sacrifice to cannibalize later. Pompey and his entourage entered the Holy of Holies, an unspeakable sacrilege given that even the high priest visited it only once a year. The Roman was