Macabeeus”—of extraordinary and victorious resistance and redemption, is so powerful that 250 years later the Romans will attempt to hunt down and slaughter all of his descendants in Judea in order to preclude another Maccabean leader from emerging to challenge them. The later demonization by the Church of the names Judas was possibly, as well, an attempt to undermine the Jewish icon of the same name, aside from the Jews as a whole.

In 145 BCE, two decades after Judas Maccabeus defeats Antiochus, his brother Simon Maccabeus sets up a Maccabean Dynasty.

Thus a revolutionary and priestly family shifts gears and asserts a royal claim to leadership, a claim far from universally welcome by the Jews. A corruption–plagued dynasty will then prevail for a hundred years before becoming a client kingdom of Rome in 37 BCE, with the installation of Rome–backed (technically non–Jewish) Herod the Great as King of Israel.

The Hasmonean dynasty was the only independent Jewish state in the four centuries after the destruction of the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and was essentially the last prior to the modern state of Israel (founded in 1948).

Vicious civil war between Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, grandsons of Simon the Maccabee, presented political and military vulnerability, which was then exploited by Roman general Pompey, who then adroitly and firmly secured control of Judea.
Later, when Pompey and Caesar die (48 BCE and 44 BCE, respectively), leading to yet another civil war in Rome, there is a brief Hasmonean resurgence backed by