and ordered the people to obey their behests. She also reinstated the customs which the Pharisees had introduced in accordance with ancestral tradition and her father-in-law, Hyrcanus, had abrogated.[1] She was thus nominally Queen, but the real power was in the hands of the Pharisees.—Ant. XIII. 15. 5-16. 2 (399-409) (58) How the Pharisees rose to Power under Queen Alexandra
A supplement to the final paragraph in the preceding section.
78-69 B.C. Beside Alexandra, and growing as she grew,[2] arose the Pharisees, a body of Jews with the reputation of excelling the rest of their nation in the observances of religion, and as exact exponents of the laws. To them, being herself devoutly religious, she listened with too great deference; while they, gradually taking advantage of an ingenuous woman, became at length the real administrators of the state, at liberty to banish and to recall, to loose and to bind, whom they would. In short, the enjoyments of royal authority were theirs; its expenses and burthens fell to Alexandra. She proved, however, to be a wonderful administrator of large affairs of state, and, by continual additions to her levies, doubled her (home) army, besides collecting a considerable body of foreign troops; so that she not only strengthened her own nation, but became a formidable foe to foreign potentates. Thus she ruled the nation, and the Pharisees ruled her.—B.J. I. 5. 2 (110-112).; lit. "grew up beside into her power" (like suckers round a tree). With the reading [Greek: autê]), "Beside A. there rose to power. . . ."]
