1367 verses about Persecution

and knowing that it is a blessed thing to endure all kinds of hardships for virtue, would not, for the sake of religion, master his passion?

Whence it is, that even boys, imbued with the philosophy of religious reasoning, have conquered still more bitter tortures:

for when the tyrant was manifestly vanquished in his first attempt, in being unable to force the old man to eat the unclean thing,—

Then, indeed, vehemently swayed with passion, he commanded to bring others of the adult Hebrews, and if they would eat of the unclean thing, to let them go when they had eaten; but if they objected, to torment them more grievously.

The tyrant having given this charge, seven kindred were brought into his presence, along with their aged mother, handsome, and modest, and well-born, and altogether comely.

When the tyrant saw them encircling their mother as in a dance, he was pleased at them; and being struck with their becoming and ingenuous mien, smiled upon them, and calling them near, said:

Will you not reason upon this—that if you disobey, there will be nothing left for you but to die in tortures?

Thus speaking, he ordered the instruments of torture to be brought forward, that very fear might prevail upon them to eat unclean meat.

And when the spearman brought forward the wheels, and the racks, and the hooks, and catapults, and caldrons, pans, and finger-racks, and iron hands and wedges, and bellows, the tyrant continue:

Now they having listened to these words of persuasion, and seeing the fearful instruments, not only were not afraid, but even answered the arguments of the tyrant, and through their good reasoning destroyed his power.

And let us bear in mind that we shall be dying as rebels.

The law itself is not forward to put us to death, if we dread torture.

Whence has such angry zeal taken root in us, and such fatal obstinacy approved itself to us, when we might live unmolested by the king?

But nothing of this kind did the young men say or think when about to be tortured.

For they were well aware of the sufferings, and masters of the pains. So that as soon as the tyrant had ceased counselling them to eat the unclean, they altogether with one voice, as from the same heart said:

Why delay you, O tyrant? for we are readier to die than to transgress the injunctions of our fathers.

O tyrant, counsellor of law-breaking, do not, hating us as you do, pity us more than we pity ourselves.

For we account escape to be worse than death.

And you think to scare us, by threatening us with death by tortures, as though you had learned nothing by the death of Eleazar.

But if aged men of the Hebrews have died in the cause of religion after enduring torture, more rightly should we younger men die, scorning your cruel tortures, which our aged instructor overcame.

Make the attempt, then, O tyrant; and if you put us to death for our religion, think not that you harm us by torturing us.

For we through this ill-treatment and endurance shall bear off the rewards of virtue.

When they had thus spoken, the tyrant was not only exasperated against them as being refractory, but enraged with them as being ungrateful.

So that, at his bidding, the torturers brought forth the oldest of them, and tearing through his tunic, bound his hands and arms on each side with thongs.

And when they had laboured hard without effect in scourging him, they hurled him upon the wheel.

And the noble youth, extended upon this, became dislocated.

And with every member disjointed, he exclaimed in expostulation,

O most accursed tyrant, and enemy of heavenly justice, and cruel-hearted, I am no murderer, nor sacrilegious man, whom you thus ill-usest; but a defender of the Divine law.

And when the spearmen said, Consent to eat, that you may be released from your tortures,—

he answered, Not so powerful, O accursed ministers, is your wheel, as to stifle my reasoning; cut my limbs, and burn my flesh, and twist my joints.

For through all my torments I will convince you that the children of the Hebrews are alone unconquered in behalf of virtue.

While he was saying this, they heaped up fuel, and setting fire to it, strained him upon the wheel still more.

And the wheel was defiled all over with blood, and the hot ashes were quenched by the droppings of gore, and pieces of flesh were scattered about the axles of the machine.

And although the framework of his bones was now destroyed the high-minded and Abrahamic youth did not groan.

But, as though transformed by fire into immortality, he nobly endured the rackings, saying

And when all admired his courageous soul, the spearmen brought forward him who was second in point of age, and having put on iron hands, bound him with pointed hooks to the catapelt.

And when, on enquiring whether he would eat before he was tortured, they heard his noble sentiment,

after they with the iron hands had violently dragged all the flesh from the neck to the chin, the panther-like beasts tore off the very skin of his head: but he, bearing with firmness this misery, said,

How sweet is every form of death for the religion of our fathers! and he said to the tyrant,

Thinkest you not, most cruel of all tyrants, that you are now tortured more than I, finding your overweening conception of tyranny conquered by our perseverance in behalf of our religion?

Now this one, having endured this praiseworthy death, the third was brought along, and exhorted by many to taste and save his life.

But he cried out and said, Know you⌃ not, that the father of those who are dead, became the father of me also; and that the same mother bare me; and that I was brought up in the same tenets?

Now then, whatever instrument of vengeance you⌃ have, apply it to my body, for you⌃ are not able to touch, even if you⌃ wish it, my soul.

But they, highly incensed at his boldness of speech, dislocated his hands and feet with racking engines, and wrenching them from their sockets, dismembered him.

And they dragged round his fingers, and his arms, and his legs, and his ankles.

And not being able by any means to strangle him, they tore off his skin, together with the extreme tips of his fingers, flayed him, and then haled him to the wheel;

around which his vertebral joints were loosened, and he saw his own flesh torn to shreds, and streams of blood flowing from his entrails.

We, O accursed tyrant, suffer this for the sake of Divine education and virtue.

And thus having died worthily of his kindred, they dragged forward the fourth, saying,

Do not you share the madness of your kindred: but give regard to the king, and save yourself.

But he said to them, You have not a fire so scorching as to make me play the coward.

Invent, O tyrant, tortures; that you may learn, even through them, that I am the brother of those tormented before.

When he had said this, the blood-thirsty, and murderous, and unhallowed Antiochus ordered his tongue to be cut out.

Behold, my tongue is extended, cut it off; for not for that halt you extirpate our reasoning.

And when he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,

I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue.

O you hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that you thus revel in our blood?

Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious toward God.

As he said this, the spearbearers bound him, and drew him to the catapelt:

to which binding him at his knees, and fastening them with iron fetters, they bent down his loins upon the wedge of the wheel; and his body was then dismembered, scorpion-fashion.

With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,

A great favor you bestow upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.

He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out; and on the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said,

for having been born and reared to the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause.

So that if you⌃ think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then torment!

As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.

Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.

And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.

And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we kindred have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.

For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

We six youths have destroyed your tyranny.

For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction?

Your fire is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your violence harmless.

For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.

When he, too, had undergone blessed martyrdom, and died in the caldron into which he had been thrown, the seventh, the youngest of all, came forward:

whom the tyrant pitying, though he had been dreadfully reproached by his kindred,

seeing him already encompassed with chains, had him brought nearer, and endeavoured to counsel him, saying,

And having thus exhorted him, he sent for the mother of the boy; that, by condoling with her for the loss of so many sons, he might incline her, through the hope of safety, to render the survivor obedient.

And he, after his mother had urged him on in the Hebrew tongue, (as we shall soon relate) says,

And he, running up to the pans, said,

Impious tyrant, and most blasphemous man, were you not ashamed, having received prosperity and a kingdom from God, to kill His servants, and to rack the doers of godliness?

Were you not ashamed, man as you are, yet most savage, to cut out the tongues of men of like feeling and origin, and having thus abused to torture them?

But they, bravely dying, fulfilled their religion towards God.

Brothers, may we die brotherly for the law. Let us imitate the three young men in Assyria who despised the equally afflicting furnace.

Let us not be cowards in the manifestation of piety.

And one and all, looking on each other serene and confident, said, Let us sacrifice with all our heart our souls to God who gave them, and employ our bodies for the keeping of the law.

Let us not fear him who thinks he kills;

If we suffer thus, Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob will receive us, and all the fathers will commend us.

And as each one of the kindred was haled away, the rest exclaimed, Disgrace us not, O brother, nor falsify those who died before you.

And yet, although nature and intercourse and virtuous morals increased their brotherly love those who were left endured to behold their kindred, who were ill-used for their religion, tortured even to death.

And more that this, they even urged them on to this ill-treatment; so that they not only despised pains themselves, but they even got the better of their affections of brotherly love.

None of the seven youths turned cowardly, or shrank back from death.

But all of them, as though running the road to immortality, hastened on to death through tortures.

For just as hands and feet are moved sympathetically with the directions of the soul, so those holy youths agreed to death for religion’s sake, as through the immortal soul of religion.

so the youths, circling around the number seven, annulled the fear of torments.

We now shudder at the recital of the affliction of those young men; but they not only saw, and not only heard the immediate execution of the threat, but undergoing it, persevered; and that through the pains of fire.

And think it not wonderful that reasoning bore rule over those men in their torments, when even a woman’s mind despised more manifold pains.

For the mother of those seven youths endured the rackings of each of her children.

The mother, when two things were set before here, religion and the safety of her seven sons for a time, on the conditional promise of a tyrant,