refusing it burial in revenge for all they have suffered from me, or to gratify their anger by any other form of outrage to it. Promise them, moreover, that you will take no action in the exercise of your royal authority without consulting them. If you thus address them, I shall obtain a more splendid funeral from them than I should have had from you—for with the power to misuse my dead body they will lack the will—and you will be secure in your rule." With this advice to his wife, he died, having reigned seven and twenty years and lived one and fifty.[1]
Alexandra took the fortress and, in accordance with her husband's suggestions, had a colloquy with the Pharisees, leaving the disposal of the corpse and of the affairs of the kingdom entirely in their hands, and so pacified their anger against Alexander and won their good-will and friendship for herself. The Pharisees then went and harangued the multitude, rehearsing Alexander's achievements, and telling them that they had lost a righteous king; and by their encomiums elicited from the people such lamentation and dejection on his behalf that they gave him a more splendid funeral than to any of the kings that had been before him.
Alexander left two sons, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, but he bequeathed the kingdom to Alexandra. Of the sons, Hyrcanus was a weak administrator and preferred a quiet life; the younger, Aristobulus, was a man of action and courage. Their mother was beloved of the multitude because she appeared to take her husband's errors to heart.
Hyrcanus she appointed high priest, because he was the elder, but still more on account of his temperamental inaction. She allowed the Pharisees complete freedom,
- ↑ Another reading, "fifty years save one."
