Although Agrippa was only prince of Chalcis, he was looked upon as the king of Judæa. Rome certainly had not deprived him of the royal title, but had divested him of all power, and made use of him only as a pliant tool and as a guard upon the movements of the surrounding nations. Agrippa was devoted to the imperial house, styling himself the emperor's friend. He displayed weakness and impotency when it behooved him to put bounds to the usurpations, insolence, and arrogance of Rome, and only showed his strength when he opposed the struggles of his people to regain their freedom and liberty. The whole house of Agrippa, including his most distant connections, Antipas and the two brothers Costobar and Saul, were all immoral, rapacious, and hostile to their own people. The only authority which Claudius, or rather his council, had left in the hands of the titular king, and which was ratified by his successors, was that which he was allowed to exercise over the Temple, and which enabled him to appoint the high priest. It was not religious zeal or moral worth that swayed Agrippa in the choice of the high priest, but simply the sentiments felt by the candidate for that office towards Rome. He who carried servility and the surrender of national aspirations furthest gained the prize. In barely twenty years Agrippa had named at least seven high priests. Among that number was Ananias (son of Eleazar?), whose enormous wealth, either acquired or inherited, allowed him to ingratiate himself with all who were open to bribery, and set him free to practise acts of lawlessness and violence. Since the time when Herod had lowered the dignity of the high priest's office by permitting it to be sold or gained by pandering to most degraded sentiments, there were certain families who seemed to have acquired a right to it--those of Boëthus, Cantheras, Phabi, Camith, and Anan or Seth, and it was but seldom that any one was elected outside that circle. The members of these families vied with each other in dishonorable conduct and frivolous thoughtlessness. Often their fierce jealousy broke out in acts of violence, and the streets of Jerusalem occasionally were the scenes of bloody skirmishes between the followers of those hostile rival houses. Each succeeding high priest tried to gain as much as possible out of his office, giving--heedless of the worth or fitness of the recipient--the most lucrative places in the Temple to his relatives and friends. So reckless were the high priests in the use, or rather abuse, of their power, that they would send their slaves, armed with clubs, to the barns to seize for themselves the tithes which every one was legally free to give to whichever priest he might select. Those priests who had not the good fortune to be related to the high priest were thus deprived of the means of subsistence, and fell into stringent poverty. Avarice and greed of power were the mainsprings of the actions of those who were elected to represent the