Hyrcanus II הורקנוס השני
the High Priest under whom Judea passed under Roman rule
He received the high priesthood under his mother, lost the kingdom to his brother three months after her death, and recovered his place only by other men's hands—the Idumean Antipater, Herod's father, and Pompey. In AM 3697 both brothers came to plead before the Roman general; he chose Hyrcanus, took Jerusalem and entered the Holy of Holies—and Judea became a tributary of Rome. The independence Shimon had won had lasted eighty years.
The Talmud remembers that siege differently: those inside lowered a basket of money from the wall and received lambs for the daily offering, until one day a pig came up instead. "Then they said: cursed be the man who raises pigs, and cursed be the man who teaches his son Greek wisdom."
After that he was ethnarch under Caesar, a prisoner of the Parthians—his nephew Antigonus cut off his ears so that, maimed, he could never serve as High Priest again—and came back to Jerusalem to live out his days under Herod. Herod executed him as a man of eighty: the last living Hasmonean could not be left alive.
On the timeline
Places
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sotah 49b — the basket with the pig and the curse on Greek wisdom
- Bava Kamma 82b — the same account of the siege
Documents of the period
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14:41–79 — the hearing before Pompey and the taking of Jerusalem
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14:365–369 — the cutting off of his ears
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15:161–178 — his execution by Herod
Basis: documents and evidence.