Hyrcanus II

Hyrcanus was the elder son of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (Josephus, Antiquities 13.407–408). Josephus, the main source for his life, sums it up at his death. He was made high priest when his mother Alexandra began her nine-year reign. On her death he was king for three months, until his brother Aristobulus II defeated him (Josephus, Antiquities 15.179–182). He agreed to retire, but the Idumean Antipater, father of Herod the Great, persuaded him to fight for his position with Arab help (Josephus, Antiquities 14.4–18). Pompey restored him as high priest and head of the nation, without a crown (Josephus, Antiquities 20.244), and a decree of Julius Caesar quoted by Josephus confirms him as high priest and ethnarch of the Jews (Josephus, Antiquities 14.190–195).

In 40 BC the Parthians invaded and set up his nephew Antigonus, who cut off his ears so that he could never again be high priest (Josephus, Antiquities 14.365–366). He later returned from Parthian captivity to Herod’s court (Josephus, Antiquities 15.179–182). After the battle of Actium, which is dated to 31 BC, Herod had him put to death when he was over eighty, on a charge of treason that Josephus reports in two versions, Herod’s own and that of other historians who held that the charge was invented (Josephus, Antiquities 15.161–164, 173–178). Josephus describes him as mild and unfit to rule, a man who let others govern for him (Josephus, Antiquities 15.179–182). See Pompey Takes Jerusalem.