Roman Intervention in a Seleucid Siege of Jerusalem

Abstract

I N THE ANNALS of the decline of the Seleucid dynasty, the reign of Antiochus VII Sidetes (139-129 B.C.) is seen as a period of partial, if abortive, revival. Bevan wrote of "one more man capable of rule and of great action, one more luminous figure, whom the house which had borne the empire of Asia had to show the world before it went out into darkness."! In Jewish history, Sidetes' contemporary John Hyrcanus (135/4-104) marks the political high point of Maccabean power, and in Emil Schiirer's view he "created a Jewish state such as had not existed since the dispersal of the ten tribes, and perhaps not since the partition of the kingdom after the death of Solomon."2 It is not my purpose to assess these judgements, but simply to suggest that, in a strange and dramatic episode, when these two luminaries came into collision, it was neither the one nor the other, but the Roman senate, far removed and operating through diplomacy alone, which controlled the situation. In 135-4, the fourth year of his reign and the first year of John Hyrcanus, the third Maccabee to rule in Judaea,3 the Seleucid Antiochus VII Sidetes invaded Palestine. He was attempting to revive the fortunes of his declining dynasty, and specifically to avenge an earlier defeat at the hands of John's predecessor Simon the Hasmonean and restore the country to its former status as a Seleucid dependency. Simon had been murdered by his son-in-law at a drunken banquet and was succeeded as ruler and high priest by John, Simon's third son. Antiochus had at first made peaceful overtures to John Hyr-