of the people, divided his army into three parts. Eight thousand men, under his own command, crossed the Jordan into Gilead; three thousand, under his brother Simon, marched into Galilee; the rest, under Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, remained to defend the liberated provinces, but with strict injunctions to make no hostile movement. The Maccabees, as usual, were irresistible: city after city fell before Judas and Jonathan. At length, having subdued the whole country, Judas found it prudent not to extend his kingdom to the bounds of that of David, and with that view removed all the Jews beyond the Jordan to the more defensible province of Judæa. Simon was equally successful in Galilee: he drove the enemy before him to the gates of Ptolemais. But the commanders who were left at home, in direct violation of orders, undertook an ill-concerted enterprise against Jamnia, a sea-port; were opposed by Bacchides, the most skilful of the Syrian generals, and met with a signal defeat.

In the mean time the great oppressor of the Jews, Antiochus, had died in Persia. That his end was miserable, both the Jewish and Roman historians agree. He had been repulsed in an assault upon a rich and sumptuous temple in Persia, called by the Greeks that of Diana; perhaps of the female Mithra, or the moon. Whether he had been incited by the desire of plunder, or by his bigoted animosity against foreign religions, does not appear; but at the same time he received intelligence of the disastrous state of his affairs in Palestine. Hastening homeward, he was seized with an incurable disorder, in a small town among the mountains of Parætacene. There, consumed in body by a loathsome ulcer, afflicted in mind by horrible apparitions and remorse of conscience, for his outrage on the Persian temple, says Polybius for his horrible barbarities and sacrilege in Judæa, assert the Hebrew writers-died the most magnificent of the Syro-Macedonian monarchs.

Lysias, who commanded in Syria, immediately set up a son of the deceased king, Antiochus Eupator, upon the throne,

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Demetrius, the rightful heir as son of Seleucus, being a hostage in Rome. The first measure of Lysias was to attempt the subjugation of Judæa, where a strong party of the apostate Jews anxiously awaited his approach.

The royal army formed the siege of Bethsura, a town on the Idumean frontier, which Judas had strongly fortified. Their force consisted of eighty or a hundred thousand foot, twenty thousand horse, and thirty-two elephants. Bethsura made a valiant defence, and Judas marched from Jerusalem to its relief. The elephants seem to have excited great terror and astonishment. According to the Jewish annalist, each beast was escorted by a thousand foot splendidly armed, and five hundred horse: each bore a tower, containing thirtytwo men; and to provoke them to fight, they showed them the blood of grapes and mulberries. The whole army, in radiant armour, spread over the mountains and valleys, so that the mountains glistened therewith, and seemed like lamps of fire. Yet wherever Judas fought, the Hebrews were successful; and his heroic brother, Eleazar, excited the admiration of his countrymen by rushing under an elephant, which he stabbed in the belly, and was crushed to death by its fall. Still Judas found himself obliged to retreat upon Jerusalem. Bethsura, pressed by famine, capitulated on honourable terms; and the royal army joined the siege of that part of the city which was in the possession of Judas. Jerusalem resisted all their assaults; the Syrians began to suffer from want of provisions; and intelligence arrived, that affairs at Antioch demanded their immediate presence. A treaty was concluded, and Antiochus admitted into the city; but, in direct violation of the terms, he threw down the walls, and dismantled the fortifications.

Demetrius, in the mean time, the lineal heir to the throne of Antioch, had escaped from Rome. After some struggle, he overpowered Lysias and Antiochus, put them to death, and became undisputed master of the kingdom. The new king adopted a more dangerous policy against the independence of Judæa than the vast armies of his predecessor. The

looser and less patriotic Jews ill-brooked the austere government of the Chasidim, who formed the party of Judas: many, perhaps, were weary of the constant warfare in which their valiant champion was engaged. Menelaus, the renegade high priest, had accompanied the army of Lysias, and endeavoured to form a faction in his favour: but, on some dissatisfaction, Lysias sent him to Berea, where he was thrown into a tower of ashes and suffocated. Onias, son of the Onias murdered by means of Menelaus, the heir of the priesthood, fled to Egypt, and Alcimus, or Jacimus, was raised to the high priesthood. By reviving the title of the high priest to the supreme authority, Demetrius hoped, if not to secure a dependent vassal in the government of Judæa, at least to sow discord among the insurgents. He sent Alcimus, supported by Bacchides, his most able general, to claim his dignity. The zealots for the law could not resist the title of the high priest. Jerusalem submitted. But no sooner had Alcimus got the leaders into his power, than he basely murdered sixty of them: Bacchides followed up the blow with great severities in other parts. Still, no sooner had Bacchides withdrawn his troops, than Judas again took up arms, and Alcimus was compelled to fly to Antioch. Demetrius despatched Nicanor, with a great army, to reinstate Alcimus. Jerusalem was still in the possession of the Syrians, and Nicanor attempted to get Judas into his power by stratagem; but the wary soldier was on his guard. A battle took place at Capharsalama: Nicanor retreated, with the loss of five thousand men, to Jerusalem, where he revenged himself by the greatest barbarities: one of the elders, named Raziz, rather than fall into his hands, stabbed himself with his own sword; but the wound not proving mortal, he ran forth and destroyed himself by other means too horrible to describe. By these cruelties, and by a threat of burning the temple and consecrating the spot to Bacchus, Nicanor endeavoured to force the people to surrender their champion. All these treacherous and crue means proving ineffectual, he was forced to revert to open war: a second battle took place, in which the superior forces