figures were raised in Cæsarea, one of them representing, in gigantic proportions, the figure of Augustus as the Olympian Jupiter, and the other that of the city of Rome as the Argive Juno. At the splendid consecration of Cæsarea, the rebuilding of which had occupied twelve years, the inhabitants could have imagined themselves transported into a pagan city. On account of its name, its origin and its importance, the national party justly called it Little Rome. In later days it became the seat of the Roman governor, the rival of Jerusalem, and finally her conqueror. Whenever Cæsarea rejoiced, Jerusalem was sure to mourn. The harbor of Cæsarea, which grew in time to be a town itself, was called Sebastus. Herod had, without doubt, enhanced the beauty of Judæa, but, like a doomed victim, she was garlanded for the altar. His love of display found satisfaction in the magnificence of his edifices, but not his love of renown. Despairing of securing the affection of his own people, he resolved to compel the admiration of the stranger. He exhausted his people by taxation, redoubled his extortions, searched for hidden treasures in the ancient royal cemeteries, sold those who had been imprisoned for theft as slaves to neighboring countries, and then lavished all the funds he had gained by these practices upon the adornment of Syrian, Asiatic, and Greek cities. Huge were the sums of money that he withdrew from his own country for such enterprises. Herod may possibly have secured the admiration and affection of the Greeks, the Romans and the Judæans outside of Palestine; but the people of Jerusalem felt nothing but aversion for this grasping upstart, who sought to estrange them from the customs of their fathers. In spite of his having shown himself to be their generous benefactor, upon the occasion of a great famine (24), the nation now only beheld in him the murderer of the Hasmonæans, the usurper of their throne, the destroyer of the noblest citizens, the suppressor of freedom. He had disgraced the three dignities of Monarch, High Priest, and Synhedrist. The first he had arrogated to himself; the second, which until his reign had, with very few exceptions, descended by right of inheritance from father to son, he had given away, according to his own pleasure or to attain his own ends; and the power of the third he had curtailed by allowing it hardly any scope for action. Joshua, of the family of Phabi, had, through Herod's instrumentality, succeeded Ananel as High Priest; but the king having been fascinated by the beauty of another Mariamne, the daughter of an inferior priest, Simon, he dispossessed Joshua of his dignity, and raised Simon to his office, in order that his future wife's rank be not too strikingly below his own.