He reduced Judea to a Roman province, and annexed it to the prefecture of Syria.
So, instead of a king ruling royally from the palace left by Herod on Mount Zion, the city fell into the hands of an officer of the second grade, an appointee called procurator, who communicated with the court in Rome through the Legate of Syria, residing in Antioch.
To make the hurt more painful, the procurator was not permitted to establish himself in Jerusalem; Caesarea was his seat of government.
Most humiliating, however, most exasperating, most studied, Samaria, of all the world the most despised--Samaria was joined to Judea as a part of the same province! What ineffable misery the bigoted Separatists or Pharisees endured at finding themselves elbowed and laughed at in the procurator's presence in Caesarea by the devotees of Gerizim! In this rain of sorrows, one consolation, and one only, remained to the fallen people: the high-priest occupied the Herodian palace in the market-place, and kept the semblance of a court there.

What his authority really was is a matter of easy estimate.

Judgment of life and death was retained by the procurator.

Justice was administered in the name and according to the decretals of Rome.

Yet more significant, the royal house was jointly occupied by the imperial exciseman, and all his corps of assistants, registrars, collectors, publicans, informers, and spies.