98:7.6

He proceeded to Egypt, grew worse in wickedness through his previously mentioned companions in wine, who were lost to all goodness, and not satisfied with countless acts of impiety, his audacity so increased that he raised evil reports there, and many of his friends, watching his purpose attentively, joined in furthering his will. His purpose was to inflict a public stigma upon our race. Therefore he erected a stone pillar in the courtyard, and caused the following inscription to be engraved upon it: “Entrance to this temple is to be refused to all those who would not sacrifice. All the Jews were to be registered among the slaves. Those who resisted are to be forcibly seized and put to death. Those who are thus registered are to be marked on their persons by the ivy-leaf symbol of Dionysus, and to be reduced to these limited rights.” To do away with the appearance of hating them all, he had it written underneath, that if any of them should elect to enter the community of those initiated in the rites, these should have equal rights with the Alexandrians.

When he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said, “I don’t intend, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is on behalf of virtue. But I have come of my own accord, that by my death you may owe heavenly vengeance and punishment for more crimes. O you hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that you thus revel in our blood? Does it seem evil to you that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law? But this is worthy of honors, not torments, if you had been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God. Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious toward God.”

As he said this, they brought him to the wheel. Extended upon this, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath. Having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails. He, while tormented, said, “O good and holy contest, in which for the sake of religion, we kindred have been called to the arena of pain, and have not been conquered. For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered. Armed with upright virtue, I also will depart with my kindred. I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O inventor of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious. We six youths have destroyed your tyranny. For isn’t your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction? Your fire is cold to us. Your racks 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.”