Antiochus the Pious

Ptolemy withdrew to one of the fortresses above Jericho, called Dagon. Hyrcanus took over the high priesthood of his father, and when he had first won God’s favor with sacrifices, he marched against Ptolemy. In attacking the place he had the better of him in every other way, and was beaten only by his pity for his mother and brothers. For Ptolemy brought them up onto the wall and tortured them in full view, and threatened to hurl them down headlong if Hyrcanus did not give up the siege. Hyrcanus reckoned that every degree by which he slackened his efforts to take the place was a kindness to those dearest to him, sparing them suffering, and so his eagerness cooled. His mother, however, stretched out her hands and begged him not to grow soft on her account, but to give his anger far greater rein, press on to take the place, get their enemy into his power, and avenge those dearest to him. Death with torture would be sweet to her, she said, if the enemy who was doing these things paid the penalty for his crimes against them. While his mother was saying this, Hyrcanus was seized with an impulse to take the fortress; but whenever he saw her beaten and torn, he went slack and was overcome by his feeling for what was being done to her. As the siege dragged on in this way, the year came round in which the Jews rest; for they keep this every seventh year, as they do on the seventh day. Released from the war for this reason, Ptolemy killed Hyrcanus’s brothers and his mother. When he had done this, he fled to Zeno, called Cotylas, who was tyrant of the city of Philadelphia. [a]

Antiochus, bitter over what he had suffered at Simon’s hands, invaded Judea in the fourth year of his reign and the first of Hyrcanus’s rule, in the hundred and sixty-second Olympiad. He laid waste the country and shut Hyrcanus up in the city itself, which he surrounded with seven camps. At first he accomplished nothing at all, because of the strength of the walls and the courage of the besieged, and also because of a shortage of water, from which his men were freed by a heavy rain that fell at the setting of the Pleiades. On the north side of the wall, where the ground happened to be level with it, he raised a hundred towers three stories high and put companies of soldiers on them. He made attacks every day, and dug a deep and very broad double trench, and so walled the inhabitants in. They for their part devised many sallies, and whenever they fell on the enemy off guard anywhere, they did them a great deal of harm; and when the enemy noticed them, they withdrew easily into the city. Hyrcanus saw that so great a crowd of people was harmful, for the provisions were being used up faster by it, while nothing was being done, as one would expect, by so many hands. So he separated out the useless part and put them out of the city, keeping only those who were in their prime and fit to fight. Antiochus would not let those who had been put out go away; and they, suffering between the walls, wasted away in their torments and died miserably. But when the Feast of Tabernacles came on, those inside took pity on them and received them back in. Hyrcanus sent to Antiochus and asked for a truce of seven days because of the festival. Antiochus, yielding to reverence for God, granted the truce, and besides this sent in a magnificent sacrifice: bulls with gilded horns, and gold and silver cups filled with all kinds of spices. Those at the gates received the sacrifice from the men who brought it and led it to the temple, while Antiochus feasted his army. In this he was very different from Antiochus Epiphanes, who, when he took the city, sacrificed swine on the altar and sprinkled the temple with their broth, overturning the laws of the Jews and the piety of their fathers. That is why the nation went to war with him and would never be reconciled with him. But this Antiochus everyone called the Pious, because of his great zeal for religion. [c]

Hyrcanus welcomed his consideration, and learning how devout he was toward the Deity, he sent an embassy to him asking him to give them back the government of their forefathers. Antiochus rejected the scheme of those who urged him to wipe out the nation because their way of life kept them apart from others, and paid them no attention. Persuaded that they did everything out of reverence, he answered the envoys that the besieged must hand over their arms, pay him tribute for Joppa and the other cities outside Judea, and receive a garrison, and on these terms the war would be over. The Jews would accept the rest, but they would not agree to the garrison, because they kept apart and did not mix with others. In place of the garrison, however, they offered hostages and five hundred talents of silver. Of this they paid three hundred at once, and the king accepted it and the hostages, among whom was Hyrcanus’s brother; and he pulled down the ring of the city’s walls. On these terms Antiochus raised the siege and withdrew. [i]

Hyrcanus opened the tomb of David, who surpassed all kings in wealth, and took out three thousand talents of silver. Relying on this money, he became the first of the Jews to keep foreign troops in his pay. He also made a friendship and alliance with Antiochus, received him into the city, and supplied his army with everything, freely and generously. When Antiochus made his campaign against the Parthians, Hyrcanus set out with him. Our witness to this is Nicolaus of Damascus, who writes in his history: “Antiochus set up a trophy at the river Lycus after defeating Indates, the Parthian general, and stayed there two days at the request of Hyrcanus the Jew, because of a festival of his fathers on which the Jews were not permitted by their law to march.” And in saying this he does not lie; for the festival of Pentecost had come, following the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for us to travel either on the Sabbaths or on the festival. But when Antiochus joined battle with Arsaces the Parthian, he lost a great part of his army and was himself killed. His brother Demetrius succeeded to the kingdom of Syria, for Arsaces had released him from captivity at the time Antiochus invaded Parthia, as has been told elsewhere. [l]