PREFATORY NOTE
This volume covers a period of one hundred year of Jewish history in Palestine -- from 63 B.C.E. to 66 A.D. -- from the fall of the Hasmonean Dynasty to the last procurators before the first revolt against Rome.

INTRODUCTION
THE RISE OF ROME
by M. Avi-Yonah
A. The Growing Shadows of Rome
At at time when the Hellenistic dynasties, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, were waging the last of their many wars for the possession of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, a struggle of much greater historical importance was taking place in the western basin of the Mediterranean.