nd was even alienated from the Jewish faith by his intimacy with
the Syrian court. He was outbidden in his high office by Onias, his
brother, who was disgraced by savage passions, and who robbed the temple
of its golden vessels. The people, indignant, rose in a tumult, and slew
his brother, Lysimachus. Meanwhile, Jason, the dispossessed high priest,
recovered his authority, and shut up Onias, or Menelaus, as he called
himself, in a castle. This was interpreted by Antiochus as an
insurrection, and he visited on Jerusalem a terrible penalty--slaughtering
forty thousand of the people, and seizing as many more for slaves. He then
abolished the temple services, seized all the sacred vessels, collected
spoil to the amount of eighteen hundred talents, defiled the altar by the
sacrifice of a sow, and suppressed every sign of Jewish independence. He
meditated the complete extirpation of the Jewish religion, dismantled the
capitol, harassed the country people, and inflicted unprecedented
barbarities. The temple itself was dedicated to Jupiter Olympius, and the
reluctant and miserable Jews were forced to join in all the rites of pagan
worship, including the bacchanalia, which mocked the virtue of the older
Romans.

(M233) From this degradation and slavery the Jews were rescued by a line
of heroes whom God raised up--the Asmoneans, or Maccabees. The head of this
heroic family was Mattathias, a man of priestly origin, living in the town
of Modin, commanding a view of the sea--an old man of wealth and influence
who refused to depart from the faith of his fathers, while most of the
nation had relapsed into the paganism of the Greeks. He slew with his own
hand an apostate Jew, who offered sacrifice to a pagan deity, and then
killed the royal commissioner, Apelles, whom Antiochus had sent to enforce
his edicts. The heroic old man, who resembled William Tell, in his mission
and character, summoned his countrymen, who adhered to the old faith, and
intrenched himself in the mountains, and headed a vigorous revolt against
the Syrian power, even fighting on the Sabbath day. The ranks of the
insurrectionists were gradually filled with those who were still zealous
for the law, or inspired with patriotic desires for independence.
Mattathias was prospered, making successful raids from his mountain
fastnesses, destroying heathen altars, and punishing apostate Jews. Two
sects joined his standard with peculiar ardor--the Zadikim, who observed
the wr