1. As premiere act of his royal auspice, Antipater insisted to Cleopatra III upon repatriation of the wealthy Jerusalemites fled to Egypt during the First Siege of Jerusalem, much to Cleopatra's distress. His objective was to tax them this side of penury that he might keep Pompey in lavish gifts, just as Cleopatra had.
2. Every poor Judean man received draft by Antipater into army service that they might fight for Rome to conquer Nabateah, the very kingdom with whom Antipater once conspired. Antipater ordered Aristobulus son kidnapped, Alexander Eliezer, and sold to slavery in Thrace. Another murder of so high profile a figure would lose him the Pharisees' esteem.
3. Yet with the help of Thrace's Jewish community, Alexander Eliezer escaped to Judea, where he amassed ten thousand soldiers and a fifteen-hundred horse cavalry. Many Thracian Jews died in the effort to scurry their prince to safety.
4. Pompey, through his new appointed Syrian governor, Aulus Gabinius, withdrew on his promised support to Antipater, and let it be known that whomever gives him the most lavish gifts would be the governor of Judea. As Governor, Antipater had so taxed the wealth of Judea that he had no gifts left, whereas Alexander had the support of an unknown source (which was surely Cleopatra), and numerous gifts arrived to Rome's Syrian camp. Yet Antipater had one trick left. When came time for Rome to arbitrate Judea's governorship, he brought with him a one-of-a-kind coin he minted of Alexander Eliezer's likeness. As he displayed this coin to Gabinius, he claimed it demonstrated Alexander's intention to promote himself not only as governor of Judea but their King. Gabinius, expected to rule in favor of Alexander, took him prisoner after the meeting with the expectation thereafter he would be crucified.
5. Alexander's mother rode to the Syrian governor's encampment and threw herself upon the governor's knees for her son's life. Gabinus granted clemency, then sprang his own trick on Antipater: Gabinus announced that it is Rome will to break the Judean state into five independent provinces: Jerusalem, Gazara, Emmaus, Jericho, and Sephoris. Meanwhile, the Sanhedrin would be supervised by a Roman viceroy with power of veto over any ruling. Alexander emerged from prison to Gabinus's presence, and Gabinus announced Alexander Eliezer the new Governor of Jerusalem, while Antipater was to lead his mere ancestral province, the much less prosperous Idumea, renamed by the Romans as Gazara.
6. Rome taxed every Judean to still deeper penury. Their soldiers requisitioned all Judea for their own uses: property confiscated, wives and daughters raped, those Judeans who resist killed in a hundred ways the world ought forget. Aristobulus, however, escaped from the Roman galleys along with another son, Antigonus Simon. Aristobulus returned under disguise to Judea, while the second Antigonus journeyed to Alexandria, where Cleopatra provided him with a garrison of 8000 soldiers. Aristobulus briefly revealed himself in Jerusalem at the court of his son to denounce Alexander Eliezer amidst a Temple service with Aristobulus's Egyptian soldiers disguised as Jews surrounding him. 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.
7. Guerilla warfare Aristobulus promised, but his imperial Egyptians were ill trained for it, only for combat by hand. He petitioned Cleopatra for more soldiers, Cleopatra promised him more troops only were he to meet Rome on the battlefield. In this, Aristobulus realized Cleopatra pronounced death sentence upon him. With Egyptian soldiers who could enact her order at any moment, Aristobulus had no choice but march upon Jerusalem with declaration of open war so as to kill his own troops, a task which Rome obliged willingly. Amidst the battle's very beginning, Aristobulus fled the field and journeyed to Machereus upon the Jordan's east bank, 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, thought a mere soldier ordinary and sent back to slavery.
8. The second Antigonus remained free, and he journeyed to Syria to raise an army of Syrians against the oppressive Imperium. Upon his own charisma, Antigonus raised an army of 30,000, and with all other forces concentrated upon Judea, a single Roman legion remained in Syria and to be overwhelmed by Antigonus's superior numbers. Yet such was the reach of Rome that but a week later, Aulus Gabinius bribed ten thousand of Antigonus's soldiers to switch loyalty to Rome, and along with the two Roman legions returned from Judea, laid Antigonus's native forces into the ground, and too sent Antigonus back to slavery. Perhaps Rome did not want to assassinate Judeas leaders for the appearance of clemency, but the reason Aristobulus was not crucified remains mysterious.
9. The new consul, Crassus, richest of all Romans, partner in Rome's first Triumverate with Pompey and Julius Caesar, arrived in Jerusalem for pillage's sake. Upon his arrival, a priest gave Crassus 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 plundering Judea's treasury, he would ascend to dictator of the Empire. Crassus politely accepted the talon, told the priest he had no knowledge of any plundering intention. An hour thereafter his men ransacked the entire temple treasury except for the Menorah in the Holy of Holies, which the same priest hid underground.
10. Crassus died in war against the Parthians, 90,000 Roman soldiery along with him. Alexander Eliezer, seeing Rome's moment of weakness and eager to show his ultimate loyalty to Judea rather than Rome, drafted an army of 30,000 to rid Judea of Rome from every corner of his father's brief former kingdom. Antipater, however, paid thouands of soldiery to turn on Aristobulus at the keyest moment. The Judeans were soundly beaten, Alexander executed, and all surviving soldiers sold into slavery.
11. The young Julius Caesar, eager to show his beneficence, pardoned Aristobulus, and while yet he had not sufficent power to retuirn Aristobulus to the Judean throne, repatriated him to Judea with two Roman legions and 40,000 pieces of Roman gold. Aristobulus 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 organized a triumph for himself through the streets of Jerusalem where Antigonus's head was paraded on a spike, along with the decomposed, flayed body of Aristobulus, glued upon the seat of a donkey.
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