The leaders of that revolt, the Hasmonai family, produced a succession of able soldiers. Besides the old Mattathiah and his heroic son Judah, Jonathan, Simon, and John, by selling their service dearly to this one or that one of the Syrian pretenders, by understandings with the ubiquitous Roman emissaries, above all by military skill of the first order, changed the virtual autonomy of Persian and Ptolemaic times into a real one, in which Syrian suzerainty was a tradition, active enough under the vigorous Sidetes, non-existent under the imbecile Cyzicenus.[64] During all this time Jews, from personal choice and royal policy, had extended their dispersion throughout the new cities founded by their Seleucid masters. Until the battle of Magnesia, 190 B.C.E., Asia Minor was the real center of the Seleucid monarchy; and in the innumerable cities established there, Jews in large numbers settled. When Judea became independent there were probably as many Jews outside of it as within it. With the Hasmonean princes—“high priest” is the title which the Hebrew legend on their coins gives them[65]—the country entered upon a career of conquest. Galilee, Idumaea, the coast cities of Philistia, portions of Gilead were seized by John, or Aristobulus, or Alexander, so that Judea rapidly became one of the important kingdoms of the East, with which no one could fail to reckon who became active in the affairs of that region. Rome had backed the Hasmoneans against Syria so long as Syria presented the possibility of becoming dangerous. But that soon ceased. By a strange paradox of history the Hellenized East found its last champion against the Romans in the Persian kings of Pontus, and when Mithradates was crushed, it could only be a question of the order in which every fragment of Alexander’s empire would slip into the maw of the eagles. The Roman liquidator, Pompey, appeared in Asia, and Antioch became a suburb of Rome. The pretext for clearing their way to Egypt by taking Judea presented itself in a disputed succession. The sons of Alexander Jannai were compelled to accept the arbitrament of the Romans, with the usual result. The loser in the award, Aristobulus, attempted to make good by arms what he had lost in the decision. A Roman army promptly invested Jerusalem, moved by the patent injustice of allowing a capable and vigorous prince to usurp the place of a submissive weakling. The Roman general walked into the inner court of the temple, and peered into the Holy of Holies. He found nothing for his pains, but his act symbolized the presence of the master, and left a fine harvest of hate and distrust for the next generations to reap.