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On these terms, hostilities were suspended, and the authority of Jonathan as deputy governor of Judæa was publicly recognised. Establishing himself at Michmash (1 Macc. ix.73), he ruled the people according to the law of Moses, though Jerusalem and many of the stronger towns were still retained by garrisons of Syrians or apostate Jews.

After the lapse, however, of a very few years, a revolution took place in Syria, which produced a surprising change in his fortunes. About the year B.C.153, Demetrius retired to a new palace he had built at Antioch, and there gave himself up to pleasure, and various luxurious excesses38. This, added to other causes, made him extremely unpopular with his subjects, and gave rise to a conspiracy which was fostered by Ariarathes king of Cappadocia, Attalus king of Pergamus, and especially by Ptolemy Philometor king of Egypt, from whom Demetrius had taken the island of Cyprus. By their connivance, a young man named Balas39 was persuaded to give himself out as the son of Antiochus Epiphanes, and to claim the Syrian throne. Through the intrigues of Heraclides, a former treasurer of Epiphanes, his claim was admitted by the Romans, and on his landing at Ptolemais after a visit to Rome, the place was betrayed by the garrison, and his standard was joined by numerous disaffected subjects of Demetrius, B.C.152.