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Jonathan “the cunning,” secured his brother’s military achievements with diplomacy. As dynastic struggle and civil war consumed the Seleucid empire, Jonathan’s astute appraisal of the political balance, and judicious offers of support, secured him substantial territorial gains. But the Seleucids tried to re-conquer Judaea: Jonathan was tricked, captured and killed. In 142 BC Simon the Great, the youngest and by now the only surviving son of Mattathias, negotiated the political independence of Judaea. It was the culmination of all his family had fought for. A year later, by popular decree, he was invested as hereditary leader and high priest of the state. This marked the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, which took its title from Mattathias’ family name. For the next century and a half, the Maccabees ruled an independent Jewish kingdom as kings and high priests, conquering an empire that soon extended to much of today’s Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. Gradually the family’s gifts weakened and they became Hellenic tyrants—until Rome imposed its will on the Middle East.
    The Maccabees represent nobility, courage and freedom, as well as the audacity to resist an empire and the right of all to worship as they wish. In a David-and-Goliath struggle, the first recorded holy war, a small band of warriors succeeded in defeating the mighty phalanxes of an arrogant despot.

CICERO
    106–43 BC
    There was a humanity in Cicero, a something almost of Christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of Roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty …
    Anthony Trollope, in the introduction to his
Life of Cicero
(1880)
    Cicero was a supreme master of the spoken word whose stirring calls in defense of the Roman republic finally cost him his life. In his own day he was uncontested as Rome’s finest orator, a statesman whose devotion and loyalty to the republic was unquestioned. He was also a man of exceptional intellect and refinement who has exerted an enduring influence on Western civilization.
    In spite of being a
novus homo
(“new man”)—none of his ancestors had attained the highest offices of state—Marcus Tullius Cicero went on to become one of Rome’s leading statesmen. A brilliant youth who studied under the best minds of the day, he entered the law as a route to politics. He rose swiftly and was renowned for the brilliance of his mind and his dazzling oratorical skills.
    Cicero was never troubled by false modesty, but the Roman people generally shared his high opinion of himself. An outsider to the patrician-dominated political system, he won election to the highest offices of state, in each case at the earliest permitted age. In 63 BC , after reaching the pinnacle of political preferment, the consulship, he quickly established himself as a national hero.Discovering the Catiline conspiracy, a patrician plot to overthrow the republic, Cicero successfully swayed the senate into decreeing the death penalty for the conspirators, trouncing Julius Caesar in debate in the process. When he announced their execution to the crowds with just one word,
vixerunt
(“their lives are done”), Cicero was hailed with tumultuous rapture as
pater patriae
—“father of the country.”
    In the space of a few sentences he could move juries and crowds from laughter to tears, anger or pity. Using simple words he could expose the heart of a complex matter, but if required he could befuddle his audience with rhetoric, winning cases by, as he put it, “throwing dust in the jurymen’s eyes.” His renowned declaration “
Civis romanus sum
” (“I am a Roman citizen”) has come to encapsulate the defense of a citizen’s rights against the overbearing power of the state. Cicero’s highly distinctive speaking style transformed the written language.