Page:Historical Works of Venerable Bede vol. 2.djvu/324

 252 both, was torn with opposite factions,—some favouring Antiochus, and others Ptolemy.

A.M. 3809 [5157].

Ptolemy Philometor reigned 35 years. Aristobulus, a Jew by nation, is a distinguished Peripatetic philosopher: he addressed to Ptolemy Philometor commentaries on the books of Moses. Antiochus Epiphanes, who reigned 11 years in Syria after Seleucus, with the surname of Philopater, in his hatred of the Jewish law, filled every place with idolatrous pollutions, and placed an image of Olympian Jupiter in the temple. Moreover, at the request of the Samaritans themselves, he built a temple to Jupiter Peregrinus, on the summit of Mount Gerizim in Samaria.But Mattathias, a priest, zealous of the laws of his fathers, took up arms against the generals of Antiochus, and on his death,his son Judas Maccabæus succeeded to the command, in the 146th year of the Grecian monarchy, in the twentieth of Ptolemy, and in the 155th Olympiad. He eventually drives the generals of Antiochus out of Judæa, and having released the temple from idols, restores to his people the laws of their fathers, after an interval of three years. Wherefore, after the flight of Onias into Egypt, of which we have spoken above, and the death of Alcimus, who unworthily sought to obtain the pontificate after he had driven out Onias, by the universal consent of the Jews, it devolved on Macabæus, and after his death was still more ably administered by his brother Jonathan, for nineteen years.

A.M. 3838 [5186].

Ptolemy Euergetes reigned 29 years. Jonathan, the captain and high priest of the Jews, makes an alliance with the Romans and Spartans. On his being slain by Triphon, the priesthood devolves on his brother Simon, the seventh year of Euergetes. After ably filling the