The story of Salome Alexandra
From: American Memories
After her husband crucified 800 people while feasting, they gave her the throne, she was 64, and ruled for 9 years that would be remembered as the most peaceful in Judea's history.
Jerusalem, 76 BCE. King Alexander Jannaeus was dying, and Judea held its breath. His reign had been soaked in blood. Civil war. Mass executions. Religious factions at each other's throats. At his lowest point, he'd crucified 800 Pharisees, members of a respected religious movement, and thrown a feast where he watched them die while dining with his concubines.
Judea was exhausted. Traumatized. Broken. On his deathbed, Alexander made an unexpected choice. Not his ambitious sons. Not a battle-hardened general. He designated his wife, Salome Alexandra, as his successor. She was approximately 64 years old. Ancient by the standards of her time. Most expected disaster. Instead, she ruled for nine years, and those years would shine in Jewish memory as a golden age of peace and abundance. This is her true story. No embellishment needed.
Salome Alexandra (called Shlomtzion in Hebrew, meaning "peace of Zion") was born around 141 BCE into a priestly family with deep connections to Jerusalem's religious elite. She married Alexander Jannaeus around 103 BCE, when he became king of the Hasmonean dynasty, descendants of the Maccabees who'd won Jewish independence from Greek rule just decades before.
But the idealism had rotted. The Hasmoneans had become what they'd fought against: corrupt, brutal, despised.
Alexander's reign was particularly savage. Constant warfare abroad. Vicious civil conflict at home, especially against the Pharisees who challenged his legitimacy and opposed his policies. The crucifixion feast was merely the most infamous atrocity among many. When he died in 76 BCE, Salome didn't just inherit a throne. She inherited a nightmare. Yet within months, something remarkable began to happen.
Salome immediately reversed her husband's most toxic policies. She reached out to the Pharisees, the very faction her husband had tortured and killed, and offered them genuine power in the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council. She balanced this by ensuring the Sadducees (the priestly aristocracy) didn't lose all influence. This wasn't weakness. It was surgical political intelligence. The civil conflict that had defined her husband's reign simply... stopped.
DOES THIS IN ANY WAY REMIND YOU OF DONALD TRUMP'S APPROACH.
Unlike Alexander, who'd launched war after war seeking glory and territory, Salome focused inward. She strengthened domestic governance. She pursued diplomacy instead of conquest, recognizing that Judea, surrounded by Egypt, Syria, and the rising power of Rome, needed wisdom more than weapons.
She supported Torah scholarship and worked closely with religious authorities, which earned her deep popular support. The people, exhausted from violence, embraced a ruler who valued learning and peace over military adventure.
The ancient sources, which are usually harsh toward rulers and almost never praise women leaders, speak of her reign with something approaching wonder.
Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, acknowledges her political skill and the stability of her rule. The Talmud goes further. In Tractate Taanit, it records: "In the days of Shimon ben Shetach and Queen Shlomtzion, rain fell on Wednesday nights, so that the wheat grains grew as large as kidneys, barley grains as large as olive pits, and lentils as large as gold dinars."
This is obviously poetic exaggeration—but it reveals how her reign was remembered: as a time when the land itself seemed blessed. When peace brought prosperity. When wisdom governed instead of violence.
Did she face opposition for being a woman? The historical record doesn't emphasize gender-based resistance. She seems to have assumed power relatively smoothly as her husband's designated heir. Her opponents challenged her policies and alliances, not her right to rule.
Some later accounts claim she revolutionized women's education or championed feminist reforms. These claims aren't supported by ancient sources. While she supported the Pharisaic movement that valued Torah study, there's no evidence she implemented policies specifically expanding women's access to education, which remained severely limited for centuries after her death.
But here's the thing: she doesn't need invented accomplishments to be extraordinary.
Ruling successfully for nine years in the ancient world as a woman in her sixties and seventies was radical in itself. Bringing peace after decades of violence. Balancing hostile factions without brutality. Maintaining independence through diplomacy. Being remembered positively by sources that usually dismissed female rulers.
These documented achievements are remarkable enough. When Salome died around 67 BCE at approximately 73 years old, the fragility of her accomplishment became immediately, tragically clear.
She'd designated her older son, Hyrcanus II, as her successor. But her younger son, Aristobulus II, refused to accept this. Civil war erupted within weeks of her death, not because people rejected female rule, but because of the oldest story in monarchical history: ambitious brothers fighting for power.
DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF BENJAMIN NETANYAHU AND EXTREMIST JEWS
The timing was catastrophic. Rome was expanding eastward. The Judean civil war gave Roman general Pompey the perfect excuse to intervene. In 63 BCE, he besieged Jerusalem and effectively ended Judean independence.
Everything Salome had carefully maintained, the peace, the balance, the autonomy, collapsed.
Not because of her gender. Not because of opposition to her policies. But because her sons' ambitions destroyed what she'd built. Judea would remain under Roman control, directly or through puppet kings like Herod, until the Second Temple's destruction in 70 CE.
So what is Salome Alexandra's true legacy?
She proved that women could govern, and govern well, in a world that offered them almost no political power. She ended civil conflict through intelligence rather than force. She chose domestic stability over military glory. She balanced competing religious factions without resorting to her husband's cruelty. She maintained Judean independence through diplomacy during a dangerous era.
And crucially, she was remembered. Ancient sources that were harsh toward most rulers and dismissive of women spoke of her reign with respect, even admiration. We don't honor her by inventing feminist credentials she doesn't need. We honor her by recognizing what she actually accomplished within the constraints she faced.
In a world of kings who ruled through violence, she ruled through wisdom. In a time when military conquest defined greatness, she chose peace and prosperity. In an era when women held almost no political power, she governed effectively for nine years.
Her actual story, the one supported by historical evidence is impressive precisely because it happened in a world that tried to make it impossible. That's not a diminished legacy. That's a triumph.
To Salome Alexandra, who ruled when few believed women could. Who chose peace when violence seemed normal. Who balanced wisdom and power when brutality was expected. Whose nine years shine across millennia as proof that another way was always possible.
Your actual accomplishments need no embellishment. What you truly were, a capable, intelligent ruler who brought peace after chaos, is remarkable enough.
WHERE IS ISRAEL TODAY AND WHO ARE THE JEWS THAT PURPORT TO BE THE BENEFACTORS OF PALESTINIAN LAND.
