1. Antipater began his reign by insisting to Cleopatra III on repatriation of the rich Jerusalemites who fled to Egypt during the first Siege of Jerusalem, much to Cleopatra's distress. His purpose was to tax them the side of penury to keep Pompey in lavish gifts, just as Cleopatra did. Antipater drafted every poor Judean man into army service to fight for Rome to conquer Nabateah, the very kingdom with whom Antipater once so closely conspired. Meanwhile, Aristobulus son, Alexander Eliezer, was kidnapped into slavery in Thrace, yet with the help of Thrace's Jewish community, he escaped to Judea, where he amassed a force of ten thousand soldiers and a cavalry of fifteen-hundred. Many Thracian Jews died in the effort to scurry their prince to safety.
2. Pompey, through his newly appointed Syrian governor, Aulus Gabinius, welched on his promised support to Antipater, and let it be known that whomever gives him the most lavish gifts will be the governor of Judea. As Governor of Judea, Antipater had so taxed the wealth of the country that he had few gifts left to give, whereas Alexander had the support of an unknown source (which was of course Cleopatra) that arrives with enormous numbers of gifts. Antipater, however, had one trick left. When it came time for the arbitration to determine who would be governor of Judea, he brought with him a one-of-a-kind coin he minted of Alexander. He showed this coin to Gabinius, claiming that it demonstrated that Alexander means to promote himself not only as governor but as King of an independent Judea. Gabinius, expected to rule in favor of Alexander, took him prisoner with the expectation that he would be shortly crucified.
3. In response, Alexander's mother fell upon the governor's knees to beg for her son's life. Gabinus granted clemency, but then sprang his own trick on Antipater: Gabinus announced that Rome wills it to break up Judea into five provinces: Jerusalem, Gazara, Emmaus, Jericho, and Sephoris. Meanwhile, the Sanhedrin would be supervised by a Roman viceroy who can veto any ruling. Alexander was marched up from prison to the Syrian court, and Gabinus announced he was to be the new Governor of Jerusalem, while Antipater was to go back and run his ancestral home province, the much less prosperous Gazara.
4. Rome taxed everyone into poverty, their soldiers requisitioned all of Judea for their own uses: property confiscated, wives and daughters raped, those who resist killed in a hundred ways the world ought forget. Aristobulus, however, escaped from the Roman galleys along with another son, Antigonus Simon, who absconded to Alexandria, where Cleopatra provided him with a garrison of 8000 soldiers. Aristobulus revealed himself in Jerusalem at the court of Alexander to denounce his son amidst a Temple service with Egyptian soldiers everywhere around him disguised as Jews. Directly after his shouted envenom at his son, Alexander left with his soldiers, his peroration promising guerrilla warfare that picks apart Roman soldiers one by one.
5. Guerilla warfare was what Aristobulus promised, but his imperial Egyptians were ill trained for it, only trained for up front hand to hand combat. He petitioned Cleopatra for more troops, Cleopatra promised him more troops if he were to fight Rome in battle, at which point he realized Cleopatra had pronounced an unofficial death sentence upon him. With Egyptian soldiers who may carry out such a sentence at any moment, had no choice but march upon Jerusalem with a declaration of open war so as to kill his own troops, a task for which Rome obliged with seeeming bliss. Amidst the battle's beginning, Aristobulus fled the field and journeyed to Machereus upon the east bank of the Jordan, where his remaining coin from Cleopatra enabled the raise of a similarly small army similarly defeated. Without even the dignity of crucifixion, Aristobulus went unrecognized, was thought a mere unrecognizable soldier ordinary and sent back into slavery.
6. The second Antigonus, however, remained free, and he journeyed to Syria to raise an army of natives against the Imperium. Antigonus raised an army of 30,000 upon his own charisma, and with all other forces concentrated upon Judea, a single Roman legion remained in Syria and were overwhelmed by Antigonus's superior numbers. But such was the reach of Rome that but a week later, Aulus Gabinius bribed ten thousand of Antigonus's forces to switch sides, and along with the two Roman legions returned from Judea, laid Antigonus's native forces upon the ground, and too sent Antigonus back into slavery. The reason he was not crucified remains a mystery.
7. The new Roman consul, Crassus, richest man in Rome, third member of the First Triumverate with Pompey and Julius Caesar, arrived in Jerusalem for triumph's sake. Rumors circulated everywhere that his purposed visit was to plunder Judea's entire treasury; but a priest gave him a bar of gold blessed by the Holy One, Blessed Be He, and told him that if Crassus accepted this ingoted bullion in lieu of the Judean treasure, he will inherit all Rome's world as dictator. Crassus politely accepted the talon, told the priest he had no knowledge of any plundering intentions. An hour thereafter his men plundered the entire temple treasury except for the Menorah in the Holy of Holies, which the same priest hid underground.
8. Crassus died in war against the Parthians, 90,000 Roman soldiery along with him. Alexander, eager to show he worked for Judea rather than Rome, his father's son and brother's brother, raised an army of 30,000 to rid the Judea's province of Rome from every corner of his father's brief former kingdom. Antipater, however, paid soldiery to turn on Aristobulus at a keyest moment. The Judeans were beaten, Alexander executed, and all surviving soldiers sold into slavery.
9. Julius Caesar however, eager to show his beneficence, pardons Aristobulus, and while he did not yet have power to make him Judean king again, sent him back to Judea with two Roman legions and 40,000 golden money. He entered Jerusalem resistanceless, and pronounced a week's mourning for his once denounced son. Yet Antipater, his connections in Judea spidering to every corner, had Aristobulus poisoned at the banquet after his own son's delayed funeral. Pompey reinstated Antipater as King of Judea, and rekindled alliance to fight against the fox-like cunning of Caesar. As a gift betokening their friendship, Pompey sent Antipater his fondest gift as show of loyalty and efficacy, the second Antigonus's head upon a platter. Antipater organizes a triumph for himself through the streets of Jerusalem where Antigonus's head was paraded on a spike, along with the decomposed and flayed body of Aristobulus, glued upon the seat of a donkey.
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