On the Destruction of Jerusalem 1.0–1.13

The four books of Kingdoms contained in sacred Scripture I have myself already followed in a brief style, down to the captivity of the Jews, the destruction of the wall, and the triumphs of Babylon, and composed them in the manner of a history. The prophetic word also dealt in a few words with the deeds of the Maccabees. The rest, down to the burning of the temple and the spoils of Titus Caesar, Josephus recounted in the style of history, an excellent narrator—would that he had been as attentive to religion and truth as he was to the investigation of events and sobriety of speech! For he showed himself a sharer in the faithlessness of the Jews even in the very account he gave of their punishment; and though he deserted their arms, he did not desert their sacrileges. He lamented their misery with tears, but he did not recognize the cause of that misery. Hence it fell to us, relying not on the help of talent but on the purpose of faith, to go a little further into the history of the Jews beyond the sequence of sacred Scripture, so that, as if looking for a rose among thorns, amid the savage crimes of the ungodly, which were paid for at the price their ungodliness deserved, we may bring out some things either about reverence for the sacred law or about the wonder of the holy religion and its foundation—things which, even for their heirs, served rather as a spectacle in adversity or an honor in prosperity. At the same time (and this is a proof of their own wickedness) let it be clear to all that they themselves were the authors of their own disaster. First, because, while busy with other things, they turned the Romans against themselves and invited to knowledge of their kingdom those by whom it was better to be unknown. They asked for friendship, not intending to keep faith. They broke the peace, though unequal in strength. Finally, they made war, though all their hope lay in walls and not in strength, whereas of all things the most wretched is to be shut in by siege, which even when it goes well usually increases dangers more often than it lessens them. But lest anyone think we have taken up a task empty of faith and superfluous, let us therefore consider the whole Hebrew race as it was led through its rulers, so that it may be plainly seen whether the succession of his line “from the thighs of Judah” never faltered, or whether it did stumble in the series of rulers but remained in him for whom all things were kept in store: he was “the hope of the nations.” Here, then, I shall take my beginning.

In the war with the Parthians—long, frequent, and of varying victory between the Maccabean leaders and the nation of the Medes—the first spark was given by grief at sacrilege. King Antiochus, called the Illustrious, son of King Antiochus, when he had also added Egypt to his empire, was lifted up into pride because the uncertain chances of war had prospered for him, and he ordered the rites of the Hebrews to be abandoned and their services to be profaned; and he dared to impose this at the demand of a great many of the Jews. The priest Mattathias could not endure this. Not only did he himself keep from the sacrilege and refuse to obey the royal edict, but, finding one of his own countrymen offering sacrifices to the images, he ran him through with the sword. Then, having gathered a band and taken the Hasideans into alliance, he and his sons killed some of those who were violating the ancestral custom and the ordinances of the law, drove out very many, and was the author of fighting on the sabbath, so that they themselves might not be caught by the same trick by which many of them had already fallen: while they refused to take up battle on the sabbath, the enemy fell upon them. Success gave him strength, and zeal for defense and the vigor of piety gave the man perseverance to the very end of his life. But when he understood that his last day was at hand, he called the citizens together and, with his children standing by, urged them to defend their fatherland and the worship of the temple; and he left them as leader Judas Maccabeus, successor of his care and concern. How often this man—vigorous in war, good in counsel, and ready in faith beyond the rest—routed innumerable forces of the enemy with a small band, it is not the business of the present work to relate. Yet it can be summed up briefly. Often enjoying success, he provoked a great multitude of enemies against himself; surrounded by it on every side, and thinking it a disgrace to give way, he rushed into battle while his companions fled. Having cut down those against whom he had advanced, he was surrounded from the flank and was killed, yet not before he had avenged his own death. Jonathan succeeded him, his equal no less in likeness of courage than in brotherhood by nature. After many deeds in warfare, and services in sacred matters, seen and approved, concerning the purification of the temple, he was shut inside a city by the enemy under a treacherous pledge of friendship and not long after was killed. John too, the elder brother, and Eleazar, younger than the rest, did not refuse death for religion. After them Simon received the supreme command, coming to it not as a novice but already proved by the triumphs he had shared with his brothers. Would that he too had been as keen-sighted in guarding against fraud as he was strong of hand and well tried in the arts of war! For when by the help of his courage he had bound the Roman commanders and the kings of nations to him in a treaty of friendship, through the deceit of Ptolemy, his son-in-law, he was invited to a banquet and, amid tables and cups, together with the two sons who were with him, he was surrounded, stripped of his arms, and wickedly put to death. But John, Simon's son, whose name was Hyrcanus, forestalled the plot and hurried to the walls of the city, where the people were waiting for him because of his father's outstanding services and also from hatred of the enemy's crime. Hardly had he entered the city when Ptolemy arrived. But when he tried to come in by another gate, he was driven back and judged that he must yield to the multitude. At once Jonathan took up the office of his father's priesthood, and having turned to the worship of divine things, he immediately carried out the duties of piety and the care of preserving his family, wishing to rescue his mother and brothers from danger. Though he had the upper hand in the fighting, he was overcome by the feeling of a just grief, so that he did not take the fortress in which they were held shut up. For Ptolemy, when he saw himself hard pressed, placed his mother and brothers on the walls, to be thrown down at once unless Jonathan gave up the war he was waging. The young man who was winning by courage was being defeated by fear for his family, and pity for his own called back the anger he had roused against the enemy. His mother, however, ready for torture, stretched out her hands, begging not for the help of rescue but for the comfort of revenge. For she feared that her son would fear more for his mother than he would spend on avenging his father; for her, she said, that death would be in place of immortality, by which her husband would be avenged and her wicked son-in-law would pay the penalty for his monstrous crime. But the young man fought more within himself than against the enemy. Whenever he thought of his father, he was set on fire; again, when he saw his mother being scourged and made ready for death, he weakened: he called back his assault and withdrew his step, because feeling drew him back. Amid the delays of the siege there came the year of rest under the law, which was the seventh. Piety gave way to religion, and the siege was lifted; but Ptolemy's savagery was roused all the more, so that he ordered those by whose exposure he had escaped punishment to be slaughtered. He at once took himself out of reach of vengeance, fleeing to Zeno, called Cotylas, ruler of Philadelphia, to protect himself by his help. Nor did Antiochus rest, indignant that his armies had been made a mockery by Simon, Jonathan's father; and wishing to snuff out Jonathan's first beginnings while they were still rising, he came to Jerusalem with a great force and besieged Hyrcanus. Hyrcanus drove off with gold the man he could not drive off with iron: opening the tomb of David (as Josephus reports), he took out three thousand talents of gold. Of these he counted out three hundred to Antiochus, so that he would leave the siege and go away bought with a price. And to lessen the odium of the deed, Hyrcanus is said to have been the first to establish hostels with this money, in which to receive poor strangers who arrived. Watching also for Antiochus's moment of need, when he was making war on the Medes, he avenged his loss and joined very many cities of Syria to himself. Samaria too, where Sebaste was later founded, he surrounded with siege works, and he entrusted its storming to his sons Aristobulus and Antigonus. Their slow siege drove those shut inside to dire famine and to the horrible food of human corpses. Driven by this necessity, they decided to seek help from Antiochus (called Aspendius), and as he brought aid they entangled him in a share of their misery. For he was defeated in battle by the brothers and saved himself from death by flight. The Samaritans, when the siege had been renewed and the city taken and overthrown, were handed over to slavery. Roused by this course of success, Aristobulus and Antigonus did not let their drive cool, but thought they should make no secret of joining to themselves the neighbors whom war had forced; until envy arose and a monstrous war blazed up, the inhabitants of those places conspiring and gathering a strong force. Yet once these were defeated, they gave John deep peace and leisure for the rest of his life. Hyrcanus, having enjoyed the favor of long quiet for thirty-one years, ended his last day, leaving five children alive, which many count as happiness: an outstanding governor and admirably sober, who never left anything, even to chance events, by which his conduct might be darkened. He entrusted the affairs of state to his wife, thinking she would govern public affairs wisely, since by a kind of foresight of mind he held that his sons would not last long; nor did his opinion deceive him. For Aristobulus, the eldest of the brothers and the more forward in spirit, turned the leadership of the priesthood into the power of a kingdom and was the first to presume to put a diadem on himself, four hundred seventy-five years and three months after Israel, freed from slavery and returning from Babylon, took itself back into its own land. Proudly, then, not content to give the other brothers a share, he soothed Antigonus alone, whom he seemed to love, with a show of honor. His mother—because she had protested that she was shut out from power and cheated of her husband's decision—he bound with chains, and he went so far in savagery, fierce with a parricidal spirit, that he kept both her and his brothers bound in the same way in close custody, so that they were driven by extreme hunger almost to death, had not Aristobulus soon paid the penalty for his wicked parricide. And first his savage mind was embittered against Antigonus himself and turned from love to hatred, so that he killed before all others the one he had promised as the sole partner of his rule: so cheap is affection among the wicked that it is quickly wrested away by evil suggestions.

It is worth while, then, not to pass over the course of his cruelty, so that John's judgment may be proved even after his death: he thought the supreme power of the state should by no means be entrusted to his elder son, whom he foresaw would turn aside with such fury from the law of piety and the rule of justice. I do not know whether it was from regard to his character, or by a grace inborn in the chief priests, that some things that were to come were poured into them, even into the less worthy. It was a wretched crime that there were men who begrudged the brothers their natural love: from this arose the first stain of evil—envy; and the fabrications that followed were of this kind.

They had first made up other charges, which Aristobulus did not believe; for love's sake he softened the slander, ascribing the bitterness of the accusation to envy. So they mixed false things with true, so that with what they had taken up to look like the truth they might get round him despite his resistance.

Meanwhile the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated in the land according to the law, a festal day full of reverence, on which the solemn sacrifice was offered. On that day Antigonus, famous for his deeds in war, came home, and it happened that on arrival he found his brother unwell. At once he went to the temple—for what would he put before religion?—girt as he was in martial dress and surrounded by an escort to match; there he prayed much to the Lord for his brother's health, and from there he hurried eagerly to his brother. Out of this a slander was composed from bitter gall and prepared with a still more bitter outcome.

For at once the most wicked of men go to the king and stir up envy: that Antigonus had led a parade of armed men more splendid than is the custom for private persons, to be shown off to the crowd so that no one would dare to oppose his attempts; by such a display nothing else was being aimed at but the king's murder and the power to seize his rule. Without difficulty the sick mind, worn out by a feeble body, was pushed into thinking credible what was asserted as true—especially since a day consecrated to religion shut out suspicion of a lie, the parade roused envy, illness added fear, and the armed company completed the belief that the crime would be carried out. So, before any attempt at the parricidal outrage was proved to him, he ordered his bodyguards with their weapons to be stationed in a dark underground passage, to kill Antigonus by stealth when he came, and not to wait for an order from the king but to slay him themselves. Indeed, when a message had been sent ahead by messengers that he should come unarmed, Aristobulus's wife turned the content of the message into its opposite: through conspirators she had it conveyed to Antigonus that his brother had been delighted by the beauty of the arms in which he had lately appeared, but because of his illness had not looked at them closely; now he asked him to bring his brother all the martial array he had put together; it would please the king if he came armed. Antigonus did not see the trick. He obeyed the word all the more eagerly because he wished to please the king and his brother alike. Aristobulus lay in the fortress first called Baris and afterwards Antonia, that is, after the triumvir Antony, by his gift and his name, along with the honor of the city. When Antigonus drew near and came to that dark passage, the king's bodyguards, seeing that he had come armed, suddenly attacked the young man, carried out their order, and cut him down unawares. That place was called Strato's Tower; and it is a common opinion that Judas, an Essene by race, was deceived by the name—an ancient history relates that, whether through the uprightness of his life or by mystical observation, he often foretold what was to come.

This man, as we have learned, on seeing Antigonus going by to visit his brother, said to those who were counted among his disciples: “Alas! Now it is good for me to die, since the truth has died for me. Antigonus is alive, who must be killed today, and the place decreed for his death is Strato's Tower, which is six hundred stadia from here; and it is already the fourth hour of the day. So the time rules out belief in the death that was foretold.” When he had said this, he began to turn over in his mind more intently how his belief had deceived him. Not long afterwards the news is brought that Antigonus has been killed in the underground passage at Strato's Tower—a place that used to be called by the same name as the one on the coast at Caesarea. When the crime had been done, Aristobulus, reflecting on what wickedness he had committed, fell ill himself. The parricide was before his eyes, turmoil in his mind, and nowhere did it leave any room for pretense. Grief was fixed in his inmost parts; his envy was turned into pity, that he had destroyed an innocent man against the right of brotherhood; the monstrousness of so great a crime ulcerated his mind. No sleep was given to his eyes, no rest to his soul. The wound crept on with hidden pain, his sick heart was seething, harsh anxieties wounded his feeble limbs, and deep sighs, with frequent groaning, pounded within him.

So, from his immoderate sorrow, the force of the disease broke out to such a point that, his inner organs torn, he vomited blood from his mouth. A page of the court, who served the royal needs, carried it out and, unaware of what had happened—it was done by chance rather than design—came to the place where Antigonus had been killed; there, on the stains of the brother's blood that were still wet, he poured out the blood of the murderer. At once there arose a cry and the groaning of those who saw it, because by some deep disposition of the Lord the blood of the most wicked parricide seemed to be poured out as an offering to the one he had slain. Roused by the noise, the king asked the cause; when they were silent, he drew it out by his eagerness to ask and their fear of his anger. When he was told, his eyes filled with tears, and groaning with what strength he had, he said: “The requital that fits my deserts is not being paid back to me; for I could not escape the eye of God, I, the contriver of so wicked a crime. The vengeance for my outrage is close at hand, and already I am being met with the fitting price of my parricide. Farewell, body! How long will you hold back a soul condemned to my brother and my mother? Why do I pour out my blood to them piece by piece? Let every hand, if there is any piety, hurl its spear at me, and let all sons and brothers, avengers of piety, run me through with the sword. Let the parricidal victim be slaughtered and sacrificed to the kinship he violated; let the guilty flesh vomit out all its blood at once. Let not the demon that drove me to such wicked daring in a savage crime be glutted with the torments of my bowels and a slow wasting.” With these words he made an end of his rule and of his life, having held royal power hardly a year, the power for which he had not shrunk from parricide.

At once his wife released the dead man's brothers from their chains and made Alexander king, who was thought to have both the advantage of age and moderation in his favor. As soon as he had obtained the kingdom, he immediately killed one brother whom he had noticed to be a rival for the throne. The remaining brother, who was more intent on life and safety than on a kingdom, he spared, free of public affairs; and at once (such is restlessness of character) he exchanged peace for war. In an encounter with Ptolemy Lathyrus he killed very many of the enemy, but the victory slipped to Lathyrus. Yet Cleopatra, his mother, took the fruit of that victory from him, for he was forced to withdraw into Egypt to escape the death that threatened him. Alexander, watching for his absence while he sought to invade parts of his kingdom, turned Theodorus also against himself, since he had taken over all the best of Theodorus's possessions. So with a sudden attack Theodorus seized the royal treasures and routed ten thousand Jews in battle; but Alexander, not broken by the blow, joined still more of the enemy's territories to his rule and reduced the peoples of the captured cities to slavery. A domestic uprising broke into these successes in war, and a quarrel that arose at banquets went on to war. Such is the inbred plague of the men of the Jews that they rouse themselves to arms from the play of a feast; and had foreign auxiliaries not been at hand for the king, the uprising would have won. But by the hired force it was suppressed, though with difficulty, about eight thousand Hebrews being killed. From there he marched into Arabia, and several of its cities were subdued; tribute was also imposed on the Moabites and the Gileadites by right of victory. Returning from there to Amathus, he found the fortress empty of defenders, since Theodorus was stunned by his great successes, and he stormed it without delay. Yet Obedas, king of the Arabs, was not altogether idle, nor did he long leave the losses of his kingdom unavenged. For with an ambush well placed he destroyed Alexander's whole army, trapped in a deep valley and crushed by a great column of camels. Alexander escaped, however, and, fleeing from the battle, made for the refuge of the city of Jerusalem, hated by his own people, since their hatred had broken out afresh on the occasion of his misfortune, because they had been held down by fear of so great a power. Nor was the discord of their minds covered by silence or waged only in words: the struggle was fought out not in one battle but in very many. In these some fifty thousand Jews perished, whom Alexander killed, more destructive to his own than to his enemies, and a victor at greater loss, since by conquering he had worn down the strength of his own kingdom. So not even he took pleasure in his victories any longer; turning away from battle, he handled his subjects by art, no longer crushing them with arms but pressing them with words, and trying to dissolve their grievances by speeches alone. It did him no good in winning favor, since his crimes outweighed his pretenses, and that very sudden turn to repentance and the unevenness of his character were held suspect as savage everywhere.

At last, since they thought they were being deceived by his pretended mildness, they roused King Demetrius to war, to help them against Alexander. Battle was joined without delay, although Alexander had to fight two armies with smaller numbers. With an escort of a thousand horse and six thousand foot, whom he had hired, and summoning to the war ten thousand Jews who were on his side, he met the enemy near the city of Shechem; they had three thousand horse and forty thousand foot. Each side tested the other's ranks: when Demetrius saw that the hired troops would not desert their loyalty, and Alexander learned that none of the Jews who had joined Demetrius had laid aside their hatred toward him, they decided to settle it by arms. Demetrius came off the better in the battle, though with great bloodshed of his own men; for those who had come on the other side as hired soldiers fought outstandingly, so that they contended with courage and loyalty to the death. So Alexander, seeing himself abandoned, his companies cut down, withdrew into the mountains. But contrary to the hopes of both, the appearance of victory came to one of them and its fruit to the other. For Demetrius was stripped bare by the departure of the Hebrews who had called him into alliance, and six thousand of them joined Alexander, by a kind of habit of human nature by which misfortune moves men to pity. So Demetrius gave way to the man he had beaten in war, seeing him already fit for battle as the Hebrews gradually flowed to him, and himself left with few. His victory stirred in men accustomed to freedom a fear of condemnation. Savagery returned to Alexander with security, and, the war having slipped past him, his rule over his own people was restored. When he asked them what he might do to win the people's hearts, the answer was: “If you were to die; for even with you dead, after suffering such grievous things, they would hardly return to favor and lay aside their hatred of the dead.” Provoked by this, and by their habit of rebellion, he killed many and drove the rest into a city called Bemeselis. Its storming brought a plague more bitter than usual, with so savage a course of cruelty that of that number he crucified eight hundred in the middle of the city, and in their sight he ordered their wives and children to be slaughtered.

He watched this, reclining among his concubines, merry amid food and cups, but drunk more with blood than with wine. By this one deed he terrified the people more than by war, so that the next night eight thousand of the Jews departed beyond Judea, and the end of their flight was to be Alexander's death; and the horror of so great an evil brought quiet to the kingdom. But when he was at rest from domestic battles, a cause of disquiet arose for him: the expedition of Antiochus against the Arabs, which he thought would be fearful and dangerous for himself. This is the Antiochus who is also called Dionysus, brother of Demetrius, the last of the line of Seleucus. Wishing to deny him passage, Alexander dug huge trenches between the city of Antipatris and the shore of Joppa, built a very high wall, and set wooden towers on it, but wasted the work, with great labor on his own side and no hindrance to the enemy. For the trenches were filled with little effort and the towers burned, and Alexander himself looked to his safety by flight—the safer because he was not thought important enough for the victor to pursue him in place of the chief enemy. For avenging the injury of the blocked road was kept for later. He marched straight against the Arabs, whose king had taken himself to ground suitable for battle. Then, suddenly wheeling their cavalry, the Arabs fell with great force and numbers on the enemy squadrons, which were spread out and rushing on without order. The fight was fierce as long as Antiochus held out (for he resisted), although his army was cut down almost like cattle. But when he himself fell (for he used to expose himself to dangers before the rest), all turned in flight; the greatest part of them, scattered in uncertain flight, was destroyed, and the rest were driven into a village called Cana and wasted away by lack of food, so that hardly a very few of them survived so great a disaster.

After this success Aretas too was called by the people of Damascus to reign, so that he might rule Coele-Syria and they might shut out Ptolemy, whom they pursued with very hostile hatred. Nor did he leave Judea free from invasion; though he defeated Alexander there, he departed by an agreement between the two sides and returned to his own land. Alexander, for his part, overthrew Pella and went against Gerasa, preparing once more to add to himself some of Theodorus's possessions, and he won it by war. Advancing from there into Syria, he overthrew Gaulana, Seleucia, and Gamala, avenging the disgrace of the earlier war, and he also pulled down the fortifications of Antiochus. From these places he turned back toward Judea and, beyond hope, was received with the joy of the whole nation for the wonderful success of his deeds. There, the rest from warfare he had won became the beginning of illness. Afflicted for some time by the recurring attacks of a quartan fever, when the trouble had eased a little he went back to military affairs and kept no moderation; stronger in spirit than in body, he broke down all the vigor of his health, used up his strength, and so died. He had held the kingdom twenty-six years, with varying success, against countless tumults of war, and he died leaving two children. Judging them unequal to the helm of the kingdom, he entrusted the supreme power to the care of his own wife, since he knew she was more acceptable to the people; and she had found favor with all because she had always thought she must keep herself apart from her husband's savagery, so that she not only shunned partnership in his outrages but, by resisting his iniquities, turned the goodwill of the whole people toward herself. Nor was her husband's judgment imprudent. For the woman exercised the right to reign without offense and without any hindrance from her sex, and she won the favor due to good government by observing the sacred law. While more attentive care was given to the temple and the instruments of fraud were dismissed, the strength of the rule grew; yet her desire for the kingdom was not broken by a mother's affection. For of her two sons one, Hyrcanus by name, the elder and milder in temper, was chosen for the hope of reigning but not its power; Aristobulus, who was keener in spirit, she kept from power and softened him with the lowliness of private life. The Pharisees attached themselves to the woman—a kind of men trained in the teaching of the law, cunning in the quality of their dispositions, eager for affairs, greedy for money. Laying hold of the elated little woman, they made her their own by extolling her according to their knowledge of divine law, so that she entrusted to them many even of the affairs of the kingdom: they brought in whom they wished, shut out whom they wished, and stripped them of their court office. In short, they so worked their way in that the fruits of all advantages came to them, while the expenses and troubles fell on the woman alone. Nor had the woman a small spirit: she dared the greatest things and ordered battles beyond the condition of her sex. For she raised a most excellent force from her own people and gathered huge forces of foreign troops, so that she was not only safe at home with every security for her reign but formidable to powerful foreigners. Yet while she was above all others, she obeyed the Pharisees as if she were their inferior. There was in her kingdom one Diogenes, who, as one of Alexander's most powerful friends, had been his close intimate. They attacked and killed him, saying that it was on his advice that those eight hundred had been crucified by Alexander in the middle of the city; and an order was given that vengeance should go on to all the others who had instigated the crime. So those whom the Pharisees directed were put to death, not those whom partnership in the crime had involved. Terrified by this, very many against whom such dangers were aimed, especially those most eminent in wealth or rank, begged Aristobulus to intercede, so that he might turn his mother from carrying out the harsher order toward better counsels. He, wishing to win favor for himself, did not refuse. The woman, though reluctantly, gave way to her son's plea, so that, in view of the offices they had held, the sentence of death on those who were being brought into such odium was softened, and she ordered only those whom she suspected as guilty, and as instigators of the crime, to leave the city. Having received security for their lives, they scattered through the countryside.

At the same time a reason arose for the young soldiers to be sent to Damascus, because Ptolemy was terrifying the inhabitants of that city with frequent raids; the needs of this business took up a strong force of Alexandra's army. Tigranes, too, who ruled the Armenians, had shut up Cleopatra under siege in the city called Ptolemais; Alexandra soothed him with gifts so that he would turn away from her. Lucullus, by breaking into the lands of the Armenians, forced him to go back with nothing done, judging it wiser to protect his own than to add another's. While Alexandra was occupied with such great affairs, she fell ill. Aristobulus seized this opportunity for his own schemes. Having gathered a band, with the support of those whom the heat of their nature had joined to him in his desire to dare every reckless thing, he seized the treasuries, and with their wealth he invited volunteers to service and bought them with pay, so that they would give him loyalty in everything he wished; and he put on the insignia of a king. Hyrcanus, troubled in mind, came to his mother in tears. She, breathing fury, shut up Aristobulus's sons and wife in the fortress first named Baris and afterwards called Antonia, of which we spoke above. Alexandra's undertakings were cut off by her swift death. Hyrcanus succeeded to the whole inheritance; even while his mother was alive he had assumed the dignity of the priesthood. Aristobulus excelled in courage and wisdom. Matters came to a contest and a clash. When battle was joined, most men left Hyrcanus and followed the other, who was better at war. Hyrcanus, with those who were left from the battle, fled to the Antonia, and having found there the sons and wife of Aristobulus, he found safety through the hostages, because Aristobulus, to prevent anything harsh being done to his family, sought terms. The agreement of the brothers was this: Hyrcanus would give up the kingdom, and all the right of rule would pass to Aristobulus; yet he would not leave Hyrcanus without honors, but, though without a share in the kingdom, would let him hold some other honor that he himself would grant. This settlement, sanctified also by the religion of the temple, held the willing assent of both. Then they parted on good terms and, greeting each other, Aristobulus went to the royal palace, and Hyrcanus calmly withdrew to Aristobulus's house.