when the roman conqueror pompey abolished the Hasmonaean kingdom in 63 BCE, the national culture (Ioudaismos, the way Judaeans do things) remained, and the nation's way of life began to replace the monarchy as the visible focus of national identity and pride. Much remained in place. The Torah could still be studied and obeyed, the festivals could still be celebrated, the priests in the Temple could still offer the required sacrifices. Pompey allowed the manageable Hyrcanus II to remain in office, not as king but as high priest and official head (ethnarch) of the Judaean nation. The defeated Aristoboulus was eventually brought as prisoner to Rome, where he nursed his pride and plotted recovery, but in many important respects the Roman conquest seemed to allow the people of Judaea to go on living as they had done before.

This arrangement lasted until the year 40 BCE, when Antigonus, son of Aristoboulus, returned to Judaea with a Parthian army and expelled the Romans from the land. The unlucky Hyrcanus was carted off to Parthia, where his ear was sliced off, while Antigonus took over the priesthood more than twenty years after his father had been forced to abandon it. The Romans were stunned by this disaster and turned for rescue to a political newcomer, a man named Herod. Herod's father, Antipater, was an Idumaean, from a territory south of Judaea proper that had been absorbed into the kingdom during its years of expansion, one of the many who had been forced to take on the Jewish way of life as a result of that expansion.