Onias exercised an influence not only over his own countrymen, but over the mind of the king as well. Philomêtor, like Euergetês, had Jewish leanings, and the high-priest of Onion was admitted to high offices of state. So also was Dositheus, “the priest and Levite,” who, in “The Rest of the Chapters of the Book of Esther” (x. 1), tells us that in the fourth year of Philomêtor, he and his son Ptolemy had brought to Egypt “this epistle of Phurim,” which had been translated into Greek at Jerusalem by Lysimachus, the son of Ptolemy. Philomêtor even acted as a judge in the great religious controversy which raged between the Jews and the Samaritans. They called upon him to decide whether the temple should have been built on Mount Moriah or Mount Gerizim, and which of them had altered the text of Deuteronomy xxvii. 12, 13. Philomêtor decided in favour of the Jews, as his duty towards his numerous Jewish subjects perhaps compelled him to do, and his religious zeal even carried him so far as to order the two unsuccessful advocates of the Samaritan cause to be put to death. While the king of Egypt was thus acting like a Jew, the king of Syria was engaged in a fierce struggle with the Jewish people. The national party had risen under Mattathias, the priest of Modin, and his five sons, of whom the third, Judas Maccabæus, was the ablest and best-known. One after another the Syrian armies were overthrown, and in B.C. 165 the Temple was purified and repaired, and a new altar dedicated in it to the Lord of Hosts. Two years later Antiochus Epiphanês died while on the march against Judæa, and with him died also the power of Syria. Rival claimants for the throne, internal and external discord, treachery and murder, sapped the foundations of its strength, and in spite of assassinations and religious quarrels, of Edomite hostility and the efforts of the Hellenising party among the Jews themselves, the power of the Maccabees went on increasing. The high-priesthood passed to them from the last of the sympathisers with the Greeks, and Jonathan, the brother and successor of Judas, was treated by the king of Syria with royal honours. Treaties were made with Sparta and Rome, and his successor, Simon, struck coins of his own. After his murder his son John Hyrcanus extended the Jewish dominion as far north as Damascus, annihilating Samaria and its temples and conquering the Edomites, whom he compelled to accept the Jewish faith. Aristobulus, who followed him, took the title of king, and added Ituræa to his kingdom, while his brother Alexander Jannæus attacked Egypt and annexed the cities of the Phœnician coast. But with royal dignity had come royal crimes. Both Aristobulus and Alexander had murdered their brothers, and their Greek names show how the champions of Jewish orthodoxy were passing over into the camp of the foe.