Crassus plunders the Temple treasure before his Parthian campaign

Marcus Licinius Crassus, governor of Syria, drew from the treasury of the Temple of Jerusalem the gold required for his campaign against the Parthians, having promised the priest Eleazar that he would touch nothing if he handed over a golden beam. He took the beam and everything else.

The pillage was felt as a profanation all the more grave in that Pompey had refrained from it some years earlier, and the death of Crassus at Carrhae was read as a punishment. The episode serves as a reminder that the Temple was also a bank, holding the private deposits of the entire diaspora.