The Parthians Take Jerusalem

Two years later Barzapharnes, a Parthian satrap, together with Pacorus, the king’s son, occupied Syria. Lysanias had by then succeeded to his father’s rule on his father’s death (his father was Ptolemy son of Mennaeus), and he persuaded the satrap, with a promise of a thousand talents and five hundred women, to bring Antigonus back to the throne and depose Hyrcanus. Won over by this, Pacorus himself advanced along the coast and ordered Barzapharnes to invade through the interior. Of the coastal peoples, the Tyrians refused to receive Pacorus, although the people of Ptolemais and Sidon had received him. He handed over a troop of his cavalry to one of the royal cupbearers who bore his own name, and ordered him to invade Judea ahead of the rest, to spy out the enemy’s situation and to help Antigonus as needed. [a] While these men were plundering Carmel, many Jews flocked to Antigonus and offered themselves eagerly for the invasion. He sent them ahead to seize the place called Drymus. A battle was fought there; they drove back the enemy, pursued them, and ran on toward Jerusalem, and as their numbers grew they advanced as far as the palace. Hyrcanus and Phasael met them with a strong force, and a battle broke out in the marketplace. Herod’s men routed the enemy and shut them up in the temple, and posted sixty men in the nearby houses to guard them. But the people who had risen against the brothers attacked these men and burned them. Herod, enraged at their loss, attacked and killed many of the people. Day after day the two sides sallied against each other from ambush, and the killing never stopped. [e]

When the festival called Pentecost came, the whole area around the temple and the entire city filled with a multitude from the countryside, most of them armed. Phasael guarded the wall, and Herod, with only a few men, guarded the palace. He made a sally against the enemy while they were in disorder in the suburb, killed a great many, and routed them all, shutting some up in the city, some in the temple, and some in the outer entrenchment. Meanwhile Antigonus asked that Pacorus be admitted as a mediator. Phasael was persuaded and received the Parthian into the city and as his guest, with five hundred horsemen. Pacorus claimed to have come to end the strife, but in truth he came to help Antigonus. He laid a trap for Phasael and persuaded him to go as envoy to Barzapharnes to negotiate an end to the war. Herod argued hard against it and urged him to kill the schemer rather than give himself up to his schemes, since barbarians are by nature faithless. But Phasael went out, taking Hyrcanus with him. To be less suspected, Pacorus left with Herod some of the horsemen called the Free, and with the rest escorted Phasael. [f]

When they reached Galilee they found the people of the country in revolt and under arms. They met the satrap, an extremely crafty man who hid his plot under a show of kindness: he gave them gifts, and then, as they went away, laid ambushes for them. They became aware of the plot when they were brought down to one of the coastal places, called Ecdippa. There they heard of the promise of the thousand talents, and that Antigonus had dedicated to the Parthians most of the women among them, as part of the five hundred. They learned too that every night the barbarians set ambushes for them, and that they would have been seized long before, had the Parthians not been waiting to take Herod first in Jerusalem, so that he would not hear of their fate and be on his guard. And this was no longer mere talk; they could already see guards posted some way off. [i] Even so, Phasael would not bring himself to abandon Hyrcanus and flee, though Ophellius urged him strongly to do so; Ophellius had learned the whole design of the plot from Saramalla, then the richest man in Syria. Instead Phasael went to the satrap and reproached him to his face for the plot, and above all for having done such a thing for money. He himself, he said, would give more for their safety than Antigonus had promised for the kingdom. The Parthian craftily cleared away suspicion with excuses and oaths, and went off to Pacorus. At once the Parthians who had been left behind with orders seized Phasael and Hyrcanus, who cursed them for their perjury and treachery. [k]

Meanwhile the cupbearer who had been sent was plotting to seize Herod, as his orders were, by tricking him into coming outside the walls. But Herod had suspected the barbarians from the start, and he had just learned that the letters revealing the plot to him had fallen into the enemy’s hands. So he would not go out, though Pacorus very plausibly insisted that he ought to go and meet the men bringing the letters; they had not been captured by the enemy, he said, and they contained no word of a plot, only an account of all Phasael had achieved. Herod, however, happened to have heard from others already that his brother had been seized. And Hyrcanus’s daughter Mariamne, the most sensible of women, came to him begging him not to go out or trust himself to the barbarians, who were now openly making their attempt. [l] While Pacorus and his men were still considering how they might carry out their plot in secret, since it was impossible to overcome so capable a man openly, Herod forestalled them. By night, without the enemy’s knowledge, he set out for Idumea with his closest relatives. When the Parthians noticed, they pursued him. He ordered his mother and his siblings, the girl who was betrothed to him with her mother, and his youngest brother to go on ahead, while he himself, with his servants, held off the barbarians and kept the way safe. At every attack he killed many of the enemy, and so he pressed on to the fortress of Masada. [m]

On this flight he found the Jews more troublesome than the Parthians. They harassed him constantly, and about seven miles from the city they even drew up in battle and fought for a considerable time. There Herod defeated them and killed many of them, and later, in memory of this success, he built up the place, adorned it with very costly palaces, raised a very strong citadel, and called it Herodium after himself. During the flight many joined him every day, and at Rhesa in Idumea his brother Joseph met him and advised him to rid himself of most of his followers, since Masada could not hold such a crowd. There were more than nine thousand. Herod took the advice and sent off the more burdensome throughout Idumea, giving them provisions for the journey, while he kept the hardiest along with his closest relatives and reached the fortress safely. There he left eight hundred men to guard the women, with provisions enough for a siege, and hurried on himself to Petra in Arabia. [n]

The Parthians in Jerusalem turned to plunder. They broke into the houses of those who had fled and into the palace, sparing only the money of Hyrcanus, which was no more than three hundred talents. Of the rest they found less than they had hoped; for Herod, long suspicious of the barbarians’ faithlessness, had sent the most splendid of his treasures ahead into Idumea, and each of his followers had done the same. After the plundering, the Parthians went so far in their insolence that they filled the whole country with undeclared war, laid waste the city of Marisa, and not only set up Antigonus as king but handed Phasael and Hyrcanus over to him in chains to be tortured. Antigonus himself rushed at Hyrcanus and mutilated his ears with his own teeth, so that he could never again, if there should be a change, recover the high priesthood; for the high priests must be whole and without defect in body. [p] But Antigonus came too late for Phasael’s courage. Phasael was before him and dashed his head against a rock, since he was barred from using sword or hands. So he showed himself a true brother of Herod, and Hyrcanus a most ignoble man, and he died most bravely, making his end fit the deeds of his life. Another account is also told: that he recovered from that blow, but a physician, sent by Antigonus supposedly to treat him, filled the wound with poisonous drugs and so killed him. Whichever is true, his end began gloriously. It is said, too, that before he breathed his last he learned from some poor woman that Herod had escaped, and said: “Now I go in good spirits, since I leave alive the man who will take vengeance on my enemies.” So Phasael died. The Parthians, though they had missed the women they most wanted, put the government of Jerusalem in Antigonus’s hands and carried Hyrcanus off in chains to Parthia.