Translation:8 Maccabees

In the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, when many of the inhabitants of the city had died from a plague, a priest called Leius ordered a rock on the mountain above the city to be carved with an enormous crowned head, facing towards the city and the valley, and he wrote an inscription on it, after which the deaths from the plague ceased. Up until the present time, the inhabitants of the Antioch call this head Charonius.

This Antiochus Epiphanes was the first to build the so-called council-house in Antioch the great, outside the city limits. Here all the councillors met with all the statesmen and all the property-holders of the city, in order to debate what to do about whatever occurred, and then to provide anything which was required. Antiochus constructed some other buildings outside the city, and called this area Epiphania after his own name; he did not put a wall around it, but it was built on the mountain.

This Antiochus Epiphanes was angry with Ptolemaeus, the king of Egypt, because Ptolemaeus demanded taxes from the Jews who lived in his territory. The Jews came to Antioch from Palestine and asked Antiochus to write to Ptolemaeus, the ruler and king of Egypt, that he should not demand taxes from the Jews, when they transported corn for their sustenance, because there was a great famine at that time in Palestine, and therefore the Jews were transporting corn from the land of Egypt. But when Ptolemaeus received Antiochus' letter, he ordered that the Jews should pay more taxes.

Then Antiochus Epiphanes marched against Ptolemaeus, because he had disregarded his letter. There was a battle between them, in which many of Antiochus' soldiers were killed, and he fled back to the borders of his own territory. When the Jews in Jerusalem learned of this, they agreed terms with Ptolemaeus and surrendered to him, because they thought that Antiochus had died. But Antiochus Epiphanes gathered another army, attacked Ptolemaeus, destroyed his army and killed him. When Antiochus heard what the Jews in Jerusalem had done, as if they rejoiced in his defeat, he marched against Jerusalem.

He besieged the city and captured it, slaughtering all the inhabitants; he took Eleazar the high priest of the Jews along with the Maccabees back to Antioch, where punished them with death. He abolished the high priesthood of Judaea, and he turned the Jews' temple, which had been built by Solomon, into a temple of Olympian Zeus and Athene. He defiled the building with meat, and prevented the Jews from performing their ancestral acts of worship; for three years, he forced them to follow Greek customs.

When Antiochus died, his son Antiochus Glaucus, who was called Hierax, became king for two years.

After him Demetrianus the son of Seleucus was king for 8 years. A Jew called Judas came to Antioch the great, and shamed Demetrianus with his entreaties, so that the king handed over the temple and the remains of the Maccabees to him. Judas buried the Maccabees in the so-called Cerateum at Antioch the great, where there was a synagogue of the Jews; Antiochus had punished the Maccabees a short way outside the city of Antioch, on the "ever-weeping" mountain opposite the temple of Zeus Casius. Then Judas cleansed the temple and refounded Jerusalem, celebrating a Passover feast in honor of God. This was the second capture of Jerusalem, as Eusebius follower of Pamphilus has recorded in his chronicle.