He seized the property of those whom he executed or otherwise condemned for the royal treasury; for this worthy pupil of Roman masters was fully alive to the advantages of proscription and confiscation. He passed over the Hasmonæan house in selecting a high priest, and chose a certain Ananel, a descendant of Aaron, but not of high-priestly family, for that office. He declared that his own was an old Judæan family which had returned from Babylonia, wishing in this way to obliterate the fact that he was descended from an Idumæan ancestor who had been forced to accept Judaism. The natives of Jerusalem, who had a good memory for his true extraction, did not indeed lend an ear to this invention, but foreign Judæans and heathens may perhaps have been deceived by it. His confidential friend and historian, Nicolaus of Damascus, relates this fiction as coming from his own lips. At the death of Shemaya and Abtalion, the presidents of the Synhedrion were chosen from a Babylonian-Judæan family, that of Bene Bathyra. Two persons still existed who might prove dangerous to Herod: an old man and a youth--Hyrcanus, who had once worn the crown and the priestly diadem, and his grandson Aristobulus, Herod's brother-in-law, who had claims upon both the royal and the priestly dignity. Herod could not devote himself to the calm enjoyment of his conquest until these two should be powerless. Hyrcanus, it was true, who had fallen captive to the Parthians, had been mutilated by them, and was therefore unfit to resume his priestly office; but his captors had generously granted him freedom, and the aged monarch had been joyfully and reverentially welcomed by the community of Babylonian Judæans. In spite of the devotion which he received from these people, Hyrcanus had an intense longing to return to his native land, and Herod was afraid that he might induce the Babylonian Judæans or the Parthians to take up his cause and help him regain his throne, from which the latter had torn him. Anxious to avert this danger, Herod bethought himself of taking Hyrcanus from Parthian influence and of bringing him under his own power. It was thus that the aged monarch received a pressing invitation to Jerusalem to share the throne and the power of king Herod, and to receive the thanks of the Idumæan for past acts of kindness that Hyrcanus had shown him. Vainly did the Babylonian Judæans warn the credulous prince not to let himself be drawn a second time into the eddy of public life; he hurried to his doom. Herod received him with every mark of respect, and gave him the place of honor at his table and in the Council, masking his treachery so completely that Hyrcanus was entirely deceived. He was unarmed and powerless in a golden cage.