Judæa's star sank with that monarch, who died, like Josiah, the last great king of the pre-exilian age, a quarter of a century before the destruction of his State. It soon became evident that the Greek inhabitants of Palestine had but dissembled their true feelings in regard to King Agrippa. Forgetful of that monarch's benefits, the Syrians and Greeks of the city of Cæsarea, and of the seaboard of Sebaste, solaced themselves by heaping abuse upon his memory, and by offering up thank-offerings to Charon for his death. The Roman soldiery quartered in those towns made common cause with the Greeks, and carried the statues of Agrippa's daughters into brothels. Claudius was not indifferent to the insults offered to his dead friend's memory. He was, on the contrary, anxious to raise Agrippa's son, Agrippa II., to the throne of Judæa. But in this he was opposed by his two all-powerful favorites, Pallas and Narcissus, on the plea of the prince's youth (he was seventeen years of age), and Judæa was thus allowed to sink once more into a Roman province. However, out of affection and respect to the dead king, the emperor gave the Judæan governor Cuspius Fadus a somewhat independent position in regard to the Syrian governor Vibius Marsus, who had always been hostile to Agrippa and the Judæans. It was his soldiery who had insulted the memory of the Judæan monarch, and for this cowardly action they were to be punished and exiled to Pontus. They managed, however, to extort a pardon from the emperor, and remained in Judæa, a circumstance which contributed not a little to excite the bitterest feelings of the national party, which they fully returned. They could ill control their hatred of the Judæans, stinging the latter into retaliation. Companies of freebooters under daring leaders prepared, as after the death of Herod, to free their country from the yoke of Rome. But Fadus was prepared for this rising. It was his desire to strengthen the Roman rule in Judæa, and to give it the same importance that it had had before the reign of Agrippa; and to this end he attempted to keep the selection of the high priest and the sacred robes in his own hands. But in this he met resistance both in the person of the high priest and at the hands of Agrippa's brother, Herod II.