Roman Conquest of Judea

After the death of Queen Salome Alexandra in 67 BC, her two Hasmonean sons — Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II — fell into open civil war over the high priesthood and the throne. Both appealed to the Roman general Pompey, who was reorganizing the east after his defeat of Mithridates VI of Pontus. Pompey came to Damascus to hear the case, was unimpressed by both, and marched on Jerusalem when Aristobulus' supporters tried to resist him. He besieged the Temple Mount for three months in the summer of 63 BC; on the day Jerusalem fell, his soldiers entered the Temple precincts, and Pompey himself walked into the Most Holy Place — a sacrilege the Jewish world never forgot, though he wisely touched nothing and ordered the cult restored. The political settlement reshaped Judea entirely. Aristobulus was sent to Rome in chains. Hyrcanus was confirmed as high priest but stripped of the kingship. Judea was carved down to a fraction of its earlier size and made tributary to Rome, supervised from the new province of Syria. Within a generation Rome installed Herod the Great as client king, the dynasty under which Jesus would be born. The 63 BC settlement is the political backdrop of the entire New Testament: a Jewish people living, restively, under Roman rule.