In 63 BCE, two brothers tore Judea apart. Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, both sons of the Hasmonean queen Alexandra, fought each other for the throne. Hyrcanus was the elder and the high priest. Aristobulus was the fighter. When their armies clashed at Jericho, Hyrcanus's soldiers switched sides mid-battle. The elder brother fled. The younger one took the crown.

That should have ended it. But a wealthy Idumean named Antipater saw opportunity in Hyrcanus's weakness. He convinced the deposed brother to seek help from Aretas, king of the Nabateans, who marched on Jerusalem with fifty thousand men. Aristobulus retreated into the Temple compound.

Then Rome arrived.

Pompey the Great, fresh from his eastern conquests, sent his general Scaurus to settle the dispute. Both brothers offered bribes. Aristobulus offered four hundred talents. Pompey initially sided with him, but Aristobulus kept stalling, retreating to fortresses, promising submission and then refusing it. Pompey lost patience.

He besieged Jerusalem. Hyrcanus's faction opened the city gates, but Aristobulus's supporters barricaded themselves inside the Temple. They cut the bridge connecting the Temple to the city and prepared for a fight. The siege lasted three months. Josephus, writing in his <i>Antiquities</i> around 93 CE, records that the Romans exploited the Sabbath, advancing their siege works on days when the Jewish defenders would only fight back if directly attacked.

When the walls finally fell, twelve thousand Jews died. Roman soldiers poured into the sacred precincts. And then Pompey did the unthinkable. He walked into the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of the Temple where only the High Priest could enter once a year. He saw the golden table, the sacred lampstand, the vessels of spice. He touched nothing. He took nothing. But the violation was complete. A pagan general had stood in the most sacred space in Judaism.

Pompey restored Hyrcanus as high priest but stripped him of the title of king. Judea became a Roman tributary. The Hasmonean kingdom, won by the Maccabees a century earlier, was effectively over. As Josephus makes clear, the brothers' civil war invited the very catastrophe they should have feared most: the loss of Jewish sovereignty itself.