Caesar's decrees marked the culmination of Roman tolerance, and the Jews enjoyed their privileges for but a short time. It is related by the historian Suetonius that they lamented his death more bitterly than any other class.[1] And they had good reason. The Republicans, who had murdered him, and his ministers, who avenged him, vied with each other for the support of the Jewish princes; but the people in Palestine suffered from the burden that the rivals imposed on the provinces in their efforts to raise armies. Antipater and his ambitious sons Herod and Phasael contrived to maintain their tyranny amid the constant shifting of power; and when the hardy mountaineers of Galilee strove under the lead of one Hezekiah (Ezekias), the founder of the party of the Zealots, to shake off the Roman yoke, Herod ruthlessly put down the revolt. But when Antigonus, the son of that Aristobulus who had been deprived of his kingdom by Hyrcanus and Pompey, roused the Parthians to invade Syria and Palestine, the Jews eagerly rose in support of the scion of the Maccabean house, and drove out the hated Idumeans with their puppet Jewish king. The struggle between the people and the Romans had begun in earnest, and though Antigonus, when placed on the throne by the Parthians, proceeded to spoil and harry the Jews, rejoicing at the restoration of the Hasmonean line, thought a new era of independence had come. [Footnote 1: Suetonius, Caesar, lxxxiv. 7.] The infatuation of Mark Antony for Cleopatra enabled Antigonus to hold his kingdom for three years (40-37 B.C.E.). Then Herod, who had escaped to Rome, returned to Syria to conquer the kingdom that Antony had bestowed on him. He brought with him the Roman legions, and for two years a fierce struggle was waged between the Idumeans, Romans, and Romanizing Jews on the one hand, and the national Jews and Parthian mercenaries of Antigonus on the other. The struggle culminated in a siege of Jerusalem. As happened in all the contests for the city, the power of trained force in the end prevailed over the enthusiasm of fervent patriots. Herod stormed the walls, put to death Antigonus and his party, and established a harsher tyranny than even the Roman conqueror had imposed. For over thirty years he held the people down with the aid of Rome and his body-guard of mercenary barbarians. His constitution was an autocracy, supplemented by assassination. In the civil war between Antony and Octavian, he was first on the losing side, as his father had been in the struggle between Pompey and Caesar; but, like his father, he knew when to go over to the victor. The master of the Roman Empire, henceforth known as Augustus, was so impressed with his carriage and resolution that he not only confirmed him in his kingdom, but added to it the territories of Chalcis and Perea to the north and east of the Jordan. Throughout his reign Herod contrived to preserve the friendship of Rome as effectually as he contrived to arouse