Herod destroys the Hasmonean house
The last king was beheaded at Antioch, the eighty-year-old High Priest executed in Jerusalem, and the last girl of the line threw herself from a roof.
Having taken Jerusalem, Herod had the throne but no right to it: he was an Idumean, grandson of people converted under John Hyrcanus, and real Hasmoneans were still alive beside him. He removed them one by one. Antigonus was executed at Antioch at his request. The young High Priest Aristobulus III, his own wife's brother, was drowned "while bathing" at Jericho. The old Hyrcanus II was executed on a charge of conspiracy. Then came the turn of his wife Mariamne, and her mother, and his own two sons by her.
The Talmud puts it shortly: "Herod was a slave of the house of the Hasmoneans… he rose and killed all his masters." One girl was left; when he wanted to marry her she went up on the roof and threw herself down with the words: "Whoever says he comes from the Hasmonean house is a slave, for none of them is left but this girl, and she threw herself from the roof."
A little over a century after a priestly family from Modi'in won back the Temple, nothing of it remained. Ramban ties this directly to the priests having taken for themselves a kingship that belonged to the tribe of Judah.
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bava Batra 3b — «he rose and killed all his masters»; the girl on the roof
Rishonim
- Ramban on Genesis 49:10 — why the whole Hasmonean house perished
Documents of the period
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15:50–56 — the death of Aristobulus III at Jericho
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15:161–178 — the execution of Hyrcanus II
Basis: tradition.