There is not the slightest indication that he was actuated by any worthy
ideal of service. To the Jewish state and race it was a great calamity
that a man of this type should gain control of the nation at the moment
when it had attained its greatest material strength. Under the kindly and
wise guidance of Simon the subsequent history of the Jewish state would
doubtless have been far different. Janneus's first aim was to establish
his power as an absolute despot. He ardently accepted the ideal of an
Oriental ruler that had been imposed upon the Jews during the short reign
of his brother Aristobulus. In realizing this ambition he met, as did
every other king in Israel's history, the strong opposition of the people
and a bold assertion of their inherited liberties. His second aim was to
break completely the power of the Pharisees. They were the party of the
people and had no sympathy with his policies. In them, therefore, he
recognized his chief opponents. His third ambition was to extend the
territory of the Jewish state to its farthest natural bounds. Soon after
the beginning of his reign he succeeded in arousing the bitter hostility
of the Greek cities on his eastern and western borders, of the reigning
kings of Egypt, and of the rising Arabian power to the south of the Dead
Sea. The objects for which he strove were comparatively petty: possession
of the cities of Ptolemais and Gaza and of certain east-Jordan cities,
such as Gadara and Amathus. He was more often defeated than victorious,
but his love of struggle and adventure and lust for conquest ever goaded
him on. In desperation his subjects even ventured to call in Demetrius,
the governor of Damascus, but when Alexander was driven away in defeat the
nation's gratitude and loyalty to the Maccabean house reasserted itself
and he was recalled. Instead of granting a general armistice and thus
conciliating his distracted people, he treacherously used his new-won
power to crucify publicly eight hundred of the Pharisees. Horror and fear
seized the survivors, so that, according to Josephus, eight thousand of
them fled into exile. After six years of civil war and the loss of fifty