98:3.5

O reasoning of the sons, lord over the emotions, and religion more desirable to a mother than children! The mother, when two things were set before her, religion and the safety of her seven sons for a time, on the conditional promise of a tyrant, rather elected the religion which according to God preserves to eternal life. In what way can I describe ethically the affections of parents toward their children, the resemblance of soul and of form impressed into the small type of a child in a wonderful manner, especially through the greater sympathy of mothers with the feelings of those born of them! For by how much mothers are by nature weak in disposition and prolific in offspring, by so much the fonder they are of children. Of all mothers, the mother of the seven was the fondest of children, who in seven childbirths had deeply engendered love toward them. Through her many pains undergone in connection with each one, she was compelled to feel sympathy with them; yet, through fear of God, she neglected the temporary salvation of her children. Not only so, but on account of the excellent disposition to the law, her maternal affection toward them was increased. For they were both just and temperate, and courageous, high-minded, fond of their kindred, and so fond of their mother that even to death they obeyed her by observing the law.

For a father worn with untimely grief, making an image of the child quickly taken away, now honored him as a god which was then a dead human being, and delivered to those that were under him mysteries and solemn rites.

O you mother, who was tried at this time with bitterer pangs than those at birth! O you only woman who have produced perfect holiness! Your firstborn, expiring, didn’t turn you, nor the second, looking miserable in his torments, nor the third, breathing out his soul. You didn’t weep when you saw each of their eyes looking sternly at their tortures, and their nostrils foreboding death! When you saw children’s flesh heaped upon children’s flesh that had been torn off, heads decapitated upon heads, dead falling upon the dead, and a choir of children turned through torture into a burying ground, you didn’t lament. Not so do siren melodies or songs of swans attract the hearers to listening, O voices of children calling on your mother in the midst of torments! With what and what manner of torments was the mother herself tortured, as her sons were undergoing the wheel and the fires! But religious reasoning, having strengthened her courage in the midst of sufferings, enabled her to forego, for the time, parental love.