The wide-spread disturbance occasioned by the murder of Cæsar (44) involved Palestine in new troubles. The Roman Judæans justly were so inconsolable at the death of this great man that they spent several entire nights mourning beside the grave that contained his ashes. The internal struggles, the bloody warfare, the constant proscriptions, were but the labor-throes of Rome previous to the birth of a new order of things; but for Judæa they were to a certain extent a fresh attack of a fatal disease. The heads of the republican party supplanted those of the Cæsarian party, but merely to be supplanted by them again in a short time; and this was the case not only in Judæa, but in various parts of the Roman empire. The republican, Cassius Longinus, had arrived in Syria for the purpose of raising troops and money, and demanded that Judæa should supply him with 700 talents. Cassius was in desperate haste, for any moment might deprive him of the supreme power with which he ruled at that time over persons and events in Syria. Thus he threw the inhabitants of four Palestinean cities into chains and sold them into slavery, because their contributions were not delivered quickly enough.
The eyes of the unfortunate monarch, Hyrcanus, were opened at last to the fact that the Idumæans were seeking only their own interest under the cloak of warm partisanship for his cause. He began to be suspicious in his dealings with them, and turned for support to a true and faithful friend, Malich, who had long since recognized the duplicity of the Idumæans. As yet Hyrcanus knew nothing of the fiendish plot by which he was to be dethroned, and which was to raise Herod, by the help of the Roman legions, to the throne of Judæa. But this rumor had reached the ears of Malich. Determined to rid the king of the hated Antipater, he contrived to poison him when he was feasting at a banquet with Hyrcanus (43). In cutting at the root, he failed, however, to destroy the growing evil, for Herod surpassed his father, not only in determination and in audacity, but also in duplicity. He avenged the death of Antipater by the assassination of Malich. All attempts to ruin the Idumæan brothers were unsuccessful. Even when Herod fell suddenly and grievously ill, Phasael was fortunate enough to subdue his enemies. A plot conceived by Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus II, supported by his kinsman Ptolemy of Chalcis, to deprive the Idumæans of their power, failed likewise, and Herod compelled Hyrcanus to crown him with the garland of victory when he made his entry into Jerusalem. As a means of disarming this terrible and mighty prince, Hyrcanus tried to attach him to his house, by betrothing him to his granddaughter Mariamne, celebrated in history no less for her beauty than for her misfortunes. The victim was to be bound to the executioner by the bonds of marriage, and her own mother, Alexandra, helped to bring about this miserable alliance.