The attempt to crush the serpent which had thus effected a lodgment in the Hasmonaean house came too late.  The result of it simply was that the Herodians had now the advantage of being able to distinguish between Hyrcanus and his “evil counsellors.”  From that moment the downfall of the Sadducaean notables was certain.  It was of no avail to them that after the battle of Philippi (42) they accused Herod and Phasael (Antipater having been murdered in 43) before Antony of having been helpful in every possible way to Cassius; Antony declared himself in the most decisive manner for the two brothers.  In their despair—­for properly speaking they were not national fanatics but only egoistic politicians—­they ultimately made common cause with Antigonus the son of Aristobulus, and threw themselves into the arms of the Parthians, perceiving the interests of the Romans and of Herod to be inseparable (40).  Fortune at first seemed to have declared in favour of the pretender.  The masses unanimously took his side; Phasael committed suicide in prison; with a single blow Herod was stripped of all his following and made a helpless fugitive.  He took refuge in Rome, however, where he was named king of Judaea by the senate, and after a somewhat protracted war he finally, with the help of the legions of Sosius, made himself master of Jerusalem (37).  The captive Antigonus was beheaded at Antioch.

King Herod began his reign by reorganising the synedrium; he ordered the execution of forty-five of its noblest members, his most zealous opponents.  These were the Sadducaean notables who long had headed the struggle against the Idumaean interlopers.  Having thus made away with the leaders of the Jerusalem aristocracy, he directed his efforts to the business of corrupting the rest.  He appointed to the most important posts obscure individuals, of priestly descent, from Babylon and Alexandria, and thus replaced with creatures of his own the old aristocracy.  Nor did he rest content with this; in order to preclude the possibility of any independent authority ever arising alongside of his own, he abolished the life-tenure of the high-priestly office, and brought it completely under the control of the secular power.  By this means he succeeded in relegating the Sadducees to utter insignificance.  They were driven out of their native sphere—­the political—­into the region of theoretical and ecclesiastical discussion, where they continued, but on quite unequal terms, their old dispute with the Pharisees.

It was during the period of Herod’s activity that the Pharisees, strictly speaking, enjoyed their greatest prosperity (Sameas and Abtalion, Hillel and Shammai); in the synedrium they became so numerous as almost to equal the priests and elders.  Quite consistently with their principles they had abstained from taking any part in the life and death struggle for the existence of the national state.  Their leaders had even counselled the fanatical defenders