1:
We are now accustomed to the fact that each generation of sages in this chapter is deemed to have received the oral tradition in a chain whose origins are at Sinai, as described in the first mishnah of this chapter. Thus the successors to Shim'on ben-Shatach and Yehudah ben-Tabbai are deemed to have been Shemaya and Avtalyon. In order to understand their contribution to the wisdom of this chapter we must continue our historical survey of the events and people who shaped the times in which these sages lived.
2:
Salomé Alexandra died in the year 67 BCE. Before she died she found herself faced with the same problem that her husband had faced before his death. This was the problem of the succession. Yannai and Shlomzion had two sons: the elder, Yoĥanan Hyrkanos, had been named for his grandfather of the same name; the younger of the two, Yehudah Aristobulos, was name for his uncle, Yannai's predecessor on the throne of Judah. It was obvious to both parents that their eldest son did not have the political acumen needed to be a successful ruler; on the other hand they could hardly pass over the elder son in favour of the younger. Alexander Yannai had solved the problem by bypassing both of them; you will recall that on his deathbed he had appointed his wife to succeed him in power.
3:
Because Salomé herself could not officiate as High Priest the arrangement had been that the elder, Yoĥanan Hyrkanos, would serve as High Priest during his mother's lifetime and thereafter during his own lifetime, while upon his mother's death the younger son, Yehudah Aristobulos, would ascend the throne and govern the country. Yoĥanan Hyrkanos had served as High Priest from his fathers's death in 76 BCE; now, upon the death of his mother in 67 BCE, the second part of the arrangement was supposed to come into force.
4:
Not surprisingly, when the time came the elder son was not prepared to give up his claim to kingship. So Yehudah Aristobulos rebelled against his elder brother who fled to the Nabatean Kingdom in Transjordan. There he was befriended in Petra by King Aretas who gave him military support to lay siege to Jerusalem in 65 CE in order to oust his brother. The civil war between the two bothers lasted for two years, until the year 63 BCE, at which time the patience of the Sanhedrin gave out and the members demanded that the matter of the succession go to impartial arbitration. (Broadly speaking, the Pharisees backed Yoĥanan Hyrkanos and the Sadducees backed Yehudah Aristobulos.)
5:
At this time the growing power in the Middle East was Rome. The Roman Republic was tottering towards its end and the great men of the day were reaching for power which was up for grabs as it were. In order to attain power one needed an army and the only legitimate way in which the Senate could authorize an army was for a war of conquest. Thus it was that at that time Julius Caesar was throwing his army 'thousands of paces' all over northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul) and France and Belgium (Transalpine Gaul) and Spain – and even poking his nose briefly into what was going on across the Channel in Britain. At the same time his son-in-law, Pompey, was doing the same thing in the East, conquering areas of land now known as Greece, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.
6:
It seemed to the frustrated members of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem that Pompey the Great would be a most suitable independent arbitrator in the bloody feud between the two brothers. So they sent a high-level delegation to Damascus where Pompey was spending the winter with his army. Pompey, never one to look a gift horse in the teeth and then to turn away, saw here a great opportunity for furthering his own aggrandizement without any bloodshed at all. The delegation of each of the brothers was politely heard and then Pompey chose in favour of Rome! Yoĥanan Hyrkanos was confirmed as High Priest but political power was assumed by Pompey acting in the name of the Roman Senate, and Yehudah Aristobulos, having been noticed by Pompey as being far too capable for safety's sake was sent to Rome in chains.
To be continued.
Ze'ev Orzech has sent me the following on the topic of the Ketubbah that was discussed in Avot041:
Little known is the fact that the rights to the ketubbah could be used by the wife as collateral for a loan or, as with any other promissory note, could be sold with the payoff to the buyer contingent upon the premature death of the husband or upon divorce. Our medieval Sages discuss, in surprisingly contemporary language, the factors which affect the value of the discounted ketubbah, such as life expectancy, health, marital happiness, etc. Thus, a woman married to an older man, or one with a choleric husband could expect to receive more money for her ketubbah than an older, happily-married wife.
