The attempt to crush the serpent which had thus effected a lodgment in the Hasmonaean house came too late. The result of it simply was that the Herodians had now the advantage of being able to distinguish between Hyrcanus and his "evil counsellors." From that moment the downfall of the Sadducaean notables was certain. It was of no avail to them that after the battle of Philippi (42) they accused Herod and Phasael (Antipater having been murdered in 43) before Antony of having been helpful in every possible way to Cassius; Antony declared himself in the most decisive manner for the two brothers. 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. He appointed to the most important posts obscure individuals, of priestly descent, from Babylon and Alexandria, and thus replaced with creatures of his own the old aristocracy. Nor did he rest content with this; in order to preclude the possibility of any independent authority ever arising alongside of his own, he abolished the life-tenure of the high-priestly office, and brought it completely under the control of the secular power. By this means he succeeded in relegating the Sadducees to utter insignificance. They were driven out of their native sphere—the political—into the region of theoretical and ecclesiastical discussion, where they continued, but on quite unequal terms, their old dispute with the Pharisees.
It was during the period of Herod's activity that the Pharisees, strictly speaking, enjoyed their greatest prosperity (Sameas and Abtalion, Hillel and Shammai); in the synedrium they became so numerous as almost to equal the priests and elders. Quite consistently with their principles they had abstained from taking any part in the life and death struggle for the existence of the national state. Their leaders had even counselled the fanatical defenders of Jerusalem to open the gates to the enemy; for this service they were treated with the highest honour by Herod. He made it part of his general policy to favour the Pharisees (as also the sect of the Essenes, insignificant though it was), it being his purpose to restrict the national life again within those purely ecclesiastical channels of activity which it had abandoned since the Maccabaean wars. However reckless his conduct in other respects, he was always scrupulously careful to avoid wounding religious susceptibilities (Antiquities, xiv. 16, 3). But although the Pharisees might be quite pleased that the high-priesthood and the kingship were no longer united in one and the same person, and that interest in the law again overshadowed interest in politics, the populace for their part could never forgive Herod for overthrowing the old dynasty. That he himself, at least in religious profession, was a Jew did not improve his position, but rather made it worse. It was not easy for him to stifle the national feeling after it had once been revived among the Jews; they could not forget the recent past, and objected to being thrust back into the time when foreign domination was endured by them as a matter of course. The Romans were regarded in quite a different light from that in which the Persians and the Greeks had been viewed, and Herod was only the client of the Romans.
His greatest danger seemed to arise from the still surviving members of the Hasmonaean family, to whom, as is easily understood, the national hopes clung. In the course of the earlier years of his reign he removed every one of them from his path, beginning with his youthful brother-in-law Aristobulus (35), after whom came his old patron Hyrcanus II. (30), then Mariamne his wife (29), and finally his stepmother Alexandra (28), the daughter of Hyrcanus and the widow of Alexander Aristobuli. Subsequently, in 25, he caused Costobarus and the sons of Babas to be executed. While thus occupied with domestic affairs, Herod had constant trouble also in his external relations, and each new phase in his political position immediately made itself felt at home. In the first instance he had much to suffer from Cleopatra, who would willingly have seen Palestine reduced under Egyptian domination once more, and who actually succeeded in inducing Antony to take from Herod several fair and valuable provinces of his realm. Next, his whole position was imperilled by the result of the battle of Actium; he had once more ranged himself upon the wrong side. But his tact did not fail him in winning Octavianus, as before it had made Antony his friend. In fact he reaped nothing but advantage from the great overturn which took place in Roman affairs; it rid him of Cleopatra, a dangerous enemy, and gave him in the new imperator a much better master than before.
During the following years he had leisure to carry out those splendid works of peace by which it was his aim to ingratiate himself with the emperor. He founded cities and harbours (Antipatris, Caesarea), constructed roads, theatres, and temples, and subsidised far beyond his frontier all works of public utility. He taxed the Jews heavily, but in compensation promoted their material interests with energy and discretion, and built for them, from 20 or 19 B.C. onwards, the temple at Jerusalem. To gain their sympathies he well knew to be impossible. Apart from the Roman legions at his back his authority had its main support in his fortresses and in his system of espionage.
But just as the acme of his splendour had been reached, he himself became the instrument of a terrible vengeance for the crimes by which his previous years had been stained; as executioner of all the Hasmonaeans, he was now constrained to be the executioner of his own children also. His suspicious temper had been aroused against his now grown-up sons by Mariamne, whose claims through their mother to the throne were superior to his own; his brother Pheroras and his sister Salome made it their special business to fan his jealousy into flame. To show the two somewhat arrogant youths that the succession was not so absolutely secure in their favour as they were supposing, the father summoned to his court Antipater, the exiled son of a former marriage. Antipater, under the mask of friendship, immediately began to carry on infamous intrigues against his half brothers, in which Pheroras and Salome unconsciously played into his hands. For years he persevered alike in favouring and unfavouring circumstances with his part, until at last, by the machinations of a Lacedemonian, Eurycles, who had been bribed, Herod was induced to condemn the sons of Mariamne at Berytus, and cause them to be strangled (Samaria, 7-6 B.C.). Not long afterwards a difference between Antipater and Salome led to the exposure of the former. Herod was compelled to drain the cup to the dregs; he was not spared the knowledge that he had murdered his children without a cause. His remorse threw him into a serious illness, in which his strong constitution wrestled long with death. While he lay at Jericho near his end he gave orders for the execution of Antipater also; and to embitter the joy of the Jews at his removal he caused their elders to be shut up together in the hippodrome at Jericho with the injunction to butcher them as soon as he breathed his last, that so there might be sorrow throughout the land. The latter order, however, was not carried out.
His death (4 B.C.) gave the signal for an insurrection of small beginnings which gradually spread until it ultimately infected all the people; it was repressed by Varus with great cruelty. Meanwhile Herod's connexions were at Rome disputing about the inheritance. The deceased king (who was survived by several children of various marriages) had made a will, which was substantially confirmed by Augustus. By it his son Philip received the northern portion of the territory on the east of the Jordan along with the district of Paneas (Caesarea Philippi); his thirty-seven years' reign over this region was happy. Another son, Herod Antipas, obtained Galilee and Peraea; he beautified his domains with architectural works (Sepphoris, Tiberias; Livias, Machaerus), and succeeded by his fox-like policy in ingratiating himself with the emperors, particularly with Tiberius, for that very cause, however, becoming odious to the Roman provincial officials. The principal heir was Archelaus, to whom Idumaea, Judaea, and Samaritis were allotted; Augustus at first refused him the title of king. Archelaus had experienced the greatest difficulty in carrying through his claims before the emperor in face of the manifold oppositions of his enemies; the vengeance which he wreaked upon his subjects was so severe that in 6 A,D. a Jewish and Samaritan embassy besought the emperor for his deposition. Augustus assented, banishing Archelaus to Vienne, and putting in his place a Roman procurator. Thenceforward Judaea continued under procurators, with the exception of a brief interval (41-44 A.D.), during which Herod Agrippa I. united under his sway all the dominions of his grandfather. /1/
— Footnote 1. Agrippa was the grandson of Mariamne through Aristobulus. Caligula, whose friendship he had secured in Rome, bestowed upon him in 37 the dominions of Philip with the title of king, and afterwards the tetrarchy of Antipas, whom he deposed and banished to Lugdunum (39). Claudius added the possessions of Archelaus. But the kingdom was again taken away from his son Agrippa II. (44), who, however, after the death of his uncle, Herod of Chalcis, obtained that principality for which at a later period (52) the tetrarchy of Philip was substituted. His sister Berenice is known as the mistress of Titus; another sister, Drusilla, was the wife of the procurator Felix. The descendants of Mariamne through Alexander held for some time an Armenian principality. — Footnote
The termination of the vassal kingship resulted in manifest advantage to the Sadducees. The high priest and synedrium again acquired political importance; they were the responsible representatives of the nation in presence of the suzerain power, and conceived themselves to be in some sort lords of land and people (John xi. 48). For the Pharisees the new state of affairs appears to have been less satisfactory. That the Romans were much less oppressive to the Jews than the rulers of the house of Herod was a consideration of less importance to them than the fact that the heathen first unintentionally and then deliberately were guilty of the rudest outrages upon the law, outrages against which those sly half-Jews had well understood how to be on their guard. It was among the lower ranks of the people, however, that hatred to the Romans had its proper seat. On the basis of the views and tendencies which had long prevailed there, a new party was now formed, that of the Zealots, which did not, like the Pharisees, aim merely at the fulfilment of all righteousness, i.e., of the law, and leave everything else in the hands of God, but was determined to take an active part in bringing about the realisation of the kingdom of God (Josephus, Antiquities, xviii. 1, 1).
As the transition to the new order of things was going on, the census of Quirinius took place (6-7 A.D.); it occasioned an immense excitement, which, however, was successfully allayed. On the withdrawal of Quirinius, Coponius remained behind as procurator of Judaea; he was followed, under Augustus, by Marcus Ambivius and Annius Rufus; under Tiberius, by Valerius Gratus (15-26 A.D.) and Pontius Pilatus (26-36 A.D.); under Caligula, by Marcellus (36-37) and Marullus (37-41 A.D.). The procurators were subordinate to the imperial legati of Syria; they resided in Caesarea, and visited Jerusalem on special occasions only. They had command of the military, and their chief business was the maintenance of the peace and the care of the revenue. They interested themselves in affairs of religion only in so far as these had a political side; the temple citadel Antonia was constantly garrisoned with a cohort. The administration of justice appears to have been left to a very considerable extent in the hands of the synedrium, but it was not allowed to give effect to any capital sentence. At the head of the native authorities stood at this time not so much the actual high priest as the college of the chief priests. The actual office of high priest had lost its political importance in consequence of the frequency with which its holders were changed; thus, for example, Annas had more influence than Caiaphas.