be set apart for them by the praetors for the building and inhabiting
the same as they shall esteem fit for that purpose, and that those who
have control of the provisions of the city shall take care that such
sorts of food as they esteem fit for their eating may be imported into
the city."[1]

[Footnote 1: Ant. XIV. x. 24.]

Caesar's decrees marked the culmination of Roman tolerance, and the Jews
enjoyed their privileges for but a short time. It is related by the
historian Suetonius that they lamented his death more bitterly than any
other class.[1] And they had good reason. The Republicans, who had
murdered him, and his ministers, who avenged him, vied with each other
for the support of the Jewish princes; but the people in Palestine
suffered from the burden that the rivals imposed on the provinces in
their efforts to raise armies. Antipater and his ambitious sons Herod
and Phasael contrived to maintain their tyranny amid the constant
shifting of power; and when the hardy mountaineers of Galilee strove
under the lead of one Hezekiah (Ezekias), the founder of the party of
the Zealots, to shake off the Roman yoke, Herod ruthlessly put down the
revolt. But when Antigonus, the son of that Aristobulus who had been
deprived of his kingdom by Hyrcanus and Pompey, roused the Parthians to
invade Syria and Palestine, the Jews eagerly rose in support of the
scion of the Maccabean house, and drove out the hated Idumeans with
their puppet Jewish king. The struggle between the people and the Romans
had begun in earnest, and though Antigonus, when placed on the throne by
the Parthians, proceeded to spoil and harry the Jews, rejoicing at the
restoration of the Hasmonean line, thought a new era of independence had
come.