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Corpus/written/travel-guides/HistoryJerusalem.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

        was now under the more tolerant rule of the Persians, but rebuilding
        was slow work. The Second Temple was finished in 515 b.c. , but much of
        the city still lay in ruins.
        Jerusalem submitted peaceably to the rule of the Greeks in
        332 b.c. under Alexander the Great and, subsequently, to his
        Hellenistic successors as well as the Egyptian Ptolomeys and the Syrian
        Seleucids. When Seleucid rulers outlawed Judaism, Jews led by Judah
        Maccabee and his brothers staged a revolution in 167 b.c. and, against
        all odds, restored the primacy of Jewish religious life in Jerusalem.
        The Macabbees cleansed the Temple of Hellenistic idols and the blood of
        pagan sacrifices; the eight-day celebration of Hanukkah (Feast of
        Dedication) commemorates their victory. The Hasmonean dynasty,
        descendants of the Maccabee family, ruled an independent Jewish
        Commonwealth that stretched from the Negev to the Galilee. Jerusalem
        grew, surrounded with a formidable wall and defended by towers beside
        the Jaffa Gate. The Hasmoneans ruled until Pompey’s Roman legions
        arrived in 63 b.c.
        Roman Jerusalem
        After the initial years of Roman administration and
        political infighting, Rome installed Herod (scion of a family from
        Idumea, a Jewish kingdom in the desert) as King of Judea. He reigned