The Hellenistic World and Rome
and he gained the office, he immediately set about converting his fel-
low countrymen to the Greek way of life. Abolishing the existing royal
privileges gained by Iohannes, the father of the Eupolemus who (later)
undertook an embassy to Rome for friendship and alliance—and the
legitimate institutions, he brought in illegal customs. For he saw fit
to establish a gymnasium below the acropolis and lead there the most
athletic of the ephebes wearing sunhats. There was such a flowering of
Hellenism and advance of gentile customs through the overwhelming
wickedness of the impious Jason, no true high priest, that the priests
were no longer conscientious over the duties concerned with the sac-
rifice, but, despising the Temple and neglecting the sacrifices, they has-
tened to take part in the unlawful exercises in the palaestra as soon as
the sound of the discus summoned them.It is noticeable in this account that the events depended on the right of the
king to dispose of the high priesthood; that the services of the Temple con-
tinued, if neglected to some degree; that there had been no previous gym-
nasium in Jerusalem; and that even the wearing of the Greek sunhat (petasos)
was regarded as an outrageous novelty. The testimony of Maccabees and
Josephus (above) would also confirm that the Hellenisers and their followers
had all been circumcised, a step which they attempted to reverse.
None the less, there is no sign at this stage of any change in Temple ritual,
of any enforcement by Seleucid officials or of any popular resistance. These
further steps came when the possibility of acquiring the high priesthood
from Antiochus had led to the replacement of Jason by Menelaus ( Macc. :
–). It is important to emphasise that this is a new phase. There is no evi-
dence to connect Menelaus with the Hellenising movement described above,
except that his opportunity to gain office from Antiochus came when he was
sent to take money to him from Jason (:). In his time as high priest, if we
may follow the only detailed narrative ( Macc. :–:), there was op-
pression in Jerusalem by him, civil war between his party and that of the de-
posed Jason, culminating during Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ invasion of Egypt
in ..,^32 and finally (/) the entry of the king and his forces into Jeru-
salem, a massacre of the inhabitants, entry into the Holy of Holies by the
king, and robbery of the Temple treasures. When the king departed, he left
an overseer (epistates) in Jerusalem and another over the Samaritans at Mount
Gerizim ( Macc. :–).
. The chronology is, of course, much disputed. I would however retain that of
Schürer, Vermes, and Millar,HistoryI, –.