=7. Home Rule.=――In the course of time the government of the people had come into the hands of the high priest. The high priesthood was an hereditary office. From father to son, or to nearest of kin, the office was handed down, and for the most part worthily exercised as a trust as well as a dignity. It was not altogether an easy office. The Jews needed ruling, and their masters――Persian, Egyptian, Syrian, or Greek, as it might be――needed conciliating. The priests had to be firm in their faith and pleasant in their manners; a fault in either meant failure; disunion was to be dreaded, and weakness was altogether fatal. For a long while the difficulties were overcome. Jaddua and Onias, and Simon the Just, who was one of the last surviving members of the Great Synagogue which Ezra founded, were all towers of strength to the priesthood and to the people. But a certain incapable high priest, called Onias II. (230 B.C.) very nearly brought his nation into trouble with Egypt over the tribute-money, which he had let fall into arrears; and Onias III. (210 B.C.), though a good man, made the terrible mistake of calling in the Syrians to settle a family dispute. Antiochus took this opportunity to usurp the right of nominating to the high priesthood. A brother of Onias had long desired the office for himself. He offered a bribe to the Syrian treasury, and in further deference to the ruling state changed his Jewish name of Joshua to the Greek-sounding one of Jason. He gained his point, and he earned besides, it may be hoped, both the contempt of those he flattered and of those he forsook. Presently another candidate, named Menelaus, arose, and, to get means for the necessary bribery, he robbed the temple treasury. So far as the Syrians were concerned, the immediate moral to the Jews was the old one of the bundle of sticks. As long as the Jews were self-respecting and self-governing, they and their government and their religion had been respected and left alone. As soon as their leaders began to riot and quarrel among themselves the fate of the bundle of sticks fell upon the people. CHAPTER IV. THE MACCABEAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.