Alexander Jannæus, who came to the throne at the age of twenty-three, was as warlike as the family from which he sprung, but he was wanting in the generalship and the judgment of his ancestors. He rushed madly into military undertakings, thus weakening the power of the people, and bringing the State more than once to the verge of destruction. The seven and twenty years of his reign were passed in foreign and civil wars, and were not calculated to increase the material prosperity of the nation. His good luck, however, was greater than his ability, for it enabled him to extricate himself from many a critical position into which he had brought himself, and also, upon the whole, to enlarge the territory of Judæa. Like his father, he employed mercenaries for his wars, whom he hired from Pisidia and Cilicia. He did not dare enroll Syrian troops, the hatred that existed between Judæans and Syrians being too deeply ingrained to permit the harmonious working of the two to be counted upon. Alexander's attention was principally directed to the seaports which had managed to free themselves from Syrian rule, owing to the rivalry that existed between the two half-brothers, Antiochus Grypus and Cyzicenus. He was particularly anxious to possess himself of the thickly-populated and important seaport town of Ptolemaïs, colonized by Judæans. Whilst his troops overran the district of Gaza, then under the dominion of Zoïlus, a captain of mercenaries, he pressed the seaport town himself with a persistent siege. The inhabitants of Ptolemaïs turned for help to the Egyptian prince Ptolemy Lathurus, who, at open warfare with his mother, had seized upon Cyprus. Lathurus, glad to have found an opportunity of acquiring greater power, and of being able at the same time to approach the caravan roads of Egypt, hastened to send thirty thousand men to the Judæan coast. He chose a Sabbath day for victoriously driving the Judæan army, consisting of at least fifty thousand men, from Asochis, near Sepphoris, back to the Jordan. More than thirty thousand of Alexander's troops remained on the field of battle, many were taken prisoners, whilst the others fled. Lathurus, with part of his army, marched through Judæa, slaughtering the inhabitants, without sparing women or children. He wished not only to revenge himself upon Alexander, but also upon the Judæans, for had they not been his enemies in Egypt? Accho likewise surrendered, and Gaza voluntarily opened its gates to him.