Pompey Takes Jerusalem

After the death of the Hasmonean queen Alexandra her two sons fought for power. The elder, Hyrcanus II, was high priest. The younger, Aristobulus II, defeated him and took the kingship. Antipater, an Idumean and the father of the future king Herod, persuaded Hyrcanus to call in the Arab king Aretas, who besieged Aristobulus in the temple at Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities 14.4–21). A Roman officer in Syria took Aristobulus’s money and ordered Aretas off (Josephus, Antiquities 14.29–33).

In the spring of 63 BC Pompey, Rome’s commander in the East, heard both brothers at Damascus, and with them a delegation of the nation that wanted neither and asked to be governed by priests, not kings. He put off his decision, and Aristobulus left to prepare for war (Josephus, Antiquities 14.38–52). Pompey marched on Jerusalem. When Aristobulus’s soldiers refused to hand over the city, he arrested Aristobulus (Josephus, Antiquities 14.54–57).

Hyrcanus’s supporters opened the gates. Those of Aristobulus held the temple mount and cut its bridge to the city. The Romans filled the ravine on the north side and raised a ramp, working on sabbaths, when the defenders would not go out to stop them. In the third month a tower fell and they broke in. Josephus says that the priests went on with the sacrifices and were cut down at the altar, and that twelve thousand Jews died (Josephus, Antiquities 14.58–71) (Josephus, Jewish War 1.141–158).

Pompey and his officers went into the sanctuary, where only the high priest might enter. Josephus says that he touched nothing, not even the two thousand talents of sacred money, and the next day ordered the temple cleansed and the sacrifices resumed (Josephus, Antiquities 14.71–73). Cicero, speaking at Rome four years later, agrees that Pompey took nothing (Cicero, Pro Flacco 67). Cassius Dio, more than 250 years afterwards, says that the wealth was plundered (Cassius Dio, Roman History 37.15–16). Tacitus notes that the inner shrine was now known to be empty, with no image (Tacitus, Histories 5.9). Pompey restored Hyrcanus as high priest and head of the nation, without a crown (Josephus, Antiquities 20.244). He imposed tribute, put the coastal and Greek cities that the Hasmoneans had conquered under the governor of Syria, and took Aristobulus and his children to Rome. “We lost our liberty,” Josephus writes, “and became subject to the Romans” (Josephus, Antiquities 14.73–79).

The Psalms of Solomon give the response of pious Jews in the city. They tell of a sinner who broke down the walls with a battering-ram while foreigners trampled the altar (Psalms of Solomon 2), and of leaders who went out to welcome him and opened the gates (Psalms of Solomon 8). They read the disaster as judgment on Jerusalem’s own sins, and they pray for a king, the son of David, “the anointed of the Lord”, to cleanse the city of the nations that trample it (Psalms of Solomon 17). From this year Judea lay under Roman power; see Herod the Great Becomes King of Judea.