[CHAPTER IX.]
AGRIPPA II. AND OUTBREAK OF THE WAR.
Position of Affairs in Judæa—Roman Oppression—Character of Agrippa II.—The last High Priest—The Zealots and the Sicarii—Eleazar ben Dinai—Quarrel with the Samaritans—Violence in Cæsarea—The Procurators—Florus—Insurrection in Cæsarea—Bloodshed in Jerusalem—The Peace and War Parties—The Leader of the Zealots, Eleazar ben Ananias—Menahem, chief of the Zealots—Massacres of Heathens and Judæans—Defeat of the Romans—The Synhedrion and its President, Simon ben Gamaliel—Position of the Synhedrion.
49–66 C. E.
Whatever triumph Judaism might celebrate by the accession of proselytes, and bright as seemed the dawn of the day predicted by the prophet, when the peoples of the earth would turn their eyes to Zion, and towards the light issuing thence to illumine the human race, yet in their native land, and more especially in Jerusalem, the yoke of the Romans weighed heavily on the Judæans, and became daily more oppressive.
The pitiable state of existing affairs crushed down all joyful feelings as to the prospective dominion of Judaism. A veil of sadness had for the last twenty years been spread over the nation, and no joyful feelings could exist beneath it. The last decades exhibit the nation as a captive who, continually tormented and goaded on by his jailer, tugs at his fetters, with the strength of despair, until he wrenches them asunder. The bloody contest between Rome, strong in arms and fertile in stratagem, and Judæa, poor in outward means of warfare and powerful only through indomitable will, inspires the deepest interest because, in spite of the disproportion between the combatants, the weak daughter of Zion would probably have gained the victory had she not been torn by conflicting parties and surrounded by treachery. Perhaps, had she awaited a more favorable moment, success might have been hers; but Providence had decreed the destruction of her national life.
This great combat, to which few struggles in the history of the world are comparable, was waged not merely for liberty, like the wars in which the Gauls, Germans, and Britons were engaged against Rome, but had likewise a religious character. The Judæan people were daily wounded in their religious sentiments by the arbitrary rule of Rome, and desired to gain their independence in order to acquire and maintain the free exercise of their religion. Such being their aim, the frequent reverses they sustained could not abate the ardent longing they felt to be free; on the contrary, it rose with each fresh disaster, and in the most trivial circumstances they saw and resented an attack upon their most sacred convictions. It was seldom, indeed, that Rome outraged the religious feelings of the Judæans as she had done under Caligula; on the contrary, she rather indulged their susceptibilities, but she often wounded them unintentionally through her despotic and jealous supervision.
The higher classes, poisoned by the seductive arts of Rome, had become deaf to the voice of duty, and the wise and vigilant among the nation feared, with reason, that the whole body would be infused with the moral prostration of its highest members. The aristocratic families were, indeed, so deeply steeped in immorality that the middle classes could hardly escape its contaminating influence. The bad example was set by the last members of the house of Herod, who were educated either in Rome itself or in the small courts of the princely Roman vassals. Agrippa II (born 27, died 91–93), son of the last noble Judæan king Agrippa I, a mere stripling of seventeen years at the time of his father's death, drank in the poisoned air of the Roman court, where the Messalinas and Agrippinas openly displayed the most hideous vices. After the demise of Herod II, the Emperor Claudius gave Agrippa the tiny kingdom of Chalcis (about 50). It was whispered that this last scion of the Hasmonæan and Herodian houses led an incestuous life with his beautiful sister Berenice, who was a year younger than himself, and a widow on the death of her husband, Herod II. There was probably some truth in the rumor, as Agrippa found himself forced to silence it. He betrothed his sister to Polemon, king of Cilicia, who, perhaps allured by her wealth even more than by her beauty, adopted Judaism to obtain her hand. But impelled by her inconstant humor, Berenice soon left Polemon, and was free again to indulge in her licentious intrigues.
Agrippa's second sister, Mariamne II (born 34), married to a native of Palestine, Julius Archelaus, dissolved that union, though she had borne him a daughter, and became the wife of the Judæan Demetrius of Alexandria, probably the son of the Alabarch Alexander, and in that case the brother of the apostate Tiberius Alexander. Still more depraved was his youngest sister, the beautiful Drusilla (born 38). Her father had promised her, when still a child, to the prince Epiphanes, the son of his friend Antiochus of Commagene, but only upon condition of his becoming a convert to Judaism. After Agrippa's death, however, Epiphanes refused to accept Judaism, and the young Agrippa gave his sister Drusilla to Aziz, king of Emesa, who declared himself willing to embrace her faith. Heedless, however, of conjugal duty, Drusilla soon abandoned her husband, married a Roman, the Governor Felix, and for his sake gave up her faith and became a pagan. The envy with which Berenice inspired Drusilla was supposed to have been the motive of the infidelity of the younger sister both to her husband and to her religion.
Although Agrippa was only prince of Chalcis, he was looked upon as the king of Judæa. Rome certainly had not deprived him of the royal title, but had divested him of all power, and made use of him only as a pliant tool and as a guard upon the movements of the surrounding nations. Agrippa was devoted to the imperial house, styling himself the emperor's friend. He displayed weakness and impotency when it behooved him to put bounds to the usurpations, insolence, and arrogance of Rome, and only showed his strength when he opposed the struggles of his people to regain their freedom and liberty. The whole house of Agrippa, including his most distant connections, Antipas and the two brothers Costobar and Saul, were all immoral, rapacious, and hostile to their own people. The only authority which Claudius, or rather his council, had left in the hands of the titular king, and which was ratified by his successors, was that which he was allowed to exercise over the Temple, and which enabled him to appoint the high priest. It was not religious zeal or moral worth that swayed Agrippa in the choice of the high priest, but simply the sentiments felt by the candidate for that office towards Rome. He who carried servility and the surrender of national aspirations furthest gained the prize. In barely twenty years Agrippa had named at least seven high priests. Among that number was Ananias (son of Eleazar?), whose enormous wealth, either acquired or inherited, allowed him to ingratiate himself with all who were open to bribery, and set him free to practise acts of lawlessness and violence. Since the time when Herod had lowered the dignity of the high priest's office by permitting it to be sold or gained by pandering to most degraded sentiments, there were certain families who seemed to have acquired a right to it—those of Boëthus, Cantheras, Phabi, Camith, and Anan or Seth, and it was but seldom that any one was elected outside that circle. The members of these families vied with each other in dishonorable conduct and frivolous thoughtlessness. Often their fierce jealousy broke out in acts of violence, and the streets of Jerusalem occasionally were the scenes of bloody skirmishes between the followers of those hostile rival houses. Each succeeding high priest tried to gain as much as possible out of his office, giving—heedless of the worth or fitness of the recipient—the most lucrative places in the Temple to his relatives and friends. So reckless were the high priests in the use, or rather abuse, of their power, that they would send their slaves, armed with clubs, to the barns to seize for themselves the tithes which every one was legally free to give to whichever priest he might select. Those priests who had not the good fortune to be related to the high priest were thus deprived of the means of subsistence, and fell into stringent poverty. Avarice and greed of power were the mainsprings of the actions of those who were elected to represent the highest ideal of morality; the Temple was despoiled by its dignitaries even before the enemy forced his way into it with his weapons of murder.