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To obviate a recurrence of such insults, he next caused a wooden partition to be erected between the court of the priests and that of the people, and surrounded himself with Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries. But a defeat he sustained, while carrying on an expedition in the country east of the Jordan, was the signal for a general rising, which resulted in civil war carried on for upwards of six years, and marked by the most shocking barbarities on both sides.

At first Jannæus met with much success, but on endeavouring to come to terms with his subjects, they declared that nothing would satisfy them short of his death, and even invoked the aid of Demetrius Euchærus, king of Syria, and in a battle near Shechem utterly routed the priest-king, with the loss of all his mercenaries. Thereupon he fled to the mountains, rallied fresh troops, drove Demetrius from the country, and took the majority of his rebellious subjects prisoners in the fortress of Bethone. Returning to Jerusalem he crucified 800 of them in one day, and seated at a banquet surrounded by his concubines, caused their wives and children to be slain before their eyes, and glutted his vengeance with the spectacle of their dying agonies.