Diogenes was a soldier in the service of the Hasmonean

Hasmonean

The Hasmonean dynasty , was the ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during classical antiquity. Between c. 140 and c. 116 BCE, the dynasty ruled semi-autonomously from the Seleucids in the region of Judea...

 king Alexander Jannaeus

Alexander Jannaeus

Alexander Jannaeus was king of Judea from 103 BC to 76 BC. The son of John Hyrcanus, he inherited the throne from his brother Aristobulus I, and appears to have married his brother's widow, Shlomtzion or "Shelomit", also known as Salome Alexandra, according to the Biblical law of Yibbum...

 (103-76 BCE). He appears in Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

's work Antiquities of the Jews

Antiquities of the Jews

Antiquities of the Jews is a twenty volume historiographical work composed by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the thirteenth year of the reign of Roman emperor Flavius Domitian which was around 93 or 94 AD. Antiquities of the Jews contains an account of history of the Jewish people,...

. In revenge for the support of certain Pharisees

Pharisees

The Pharisees were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews during the Second Temple period beginning under the Hasmonean dynasty in the wake of...

 for Demetrius III of Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

's invasion of Judea

Judea

Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...

, Diogenes advised Alexander to crucify 800 Pharisee scholars and murder their families before their eyes. Graetz and others, using 5 Maccabees

5 Maccabees

The Fifth book of the Maccabees is an ancient Jewish work relating the history in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.-Content:The book chronicles the events from Heliodorus' attempt to rob the Temple treasury in 186 BC to the death of Herod the Great's two sons about 6 BC...

 as their source, identified Diogenes as a Sadducee.

Following Alexander's death, his widow and successor Salome Alexandra

Salome Alexandra

Salome Alexandra or Alexandra of Jerusalem , was the only Jewish regnant queen, with the exception of her own husband's mother whom he had prevented from ruling as his dying father had wished, and of the much earlier usurper Athaliah...

, probably at the urging of her brother Simeon ben Shetach

Simeon ben Shetach

Simeon ben Shetach or Shimon ben Shetach was a Pharisee scholar and Nasi of the Sanhedrin during the reigns of Alexander Jannæus and his successor, Queen Alexandra Salome , who was Simeon's sister...

, had Diogenes put to death.