Onias Goes to the King
1The Simon already mentioned, who had informed on the funds and betrayed his homeland, went about slandering Onias, alleging that it was Onias who had provoked Heliodorus and had been the instigator of the harm. 2He dared to call the benefactor of the city, the guardian of his fellow countrymen, the zealous upholder of the laws, a plotter against the government. 3When the hostility went so far that murders were being committed by one of Simon’s trusted agents, 4Onias saw how dangerous the rivalry was, and that Apollonius son of Menestheus, the commander of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, was feeding Simon’s malice. 5He made his way to the king — not to accuse his fellow citizens, but looking to the good of the whole people, both public and private. 6For he saw that without the king’s attention public affairs could no longer find peace, and Simon would never stop his folly.
Jason and the Greek Way of Life
7After Seleucus had departed this life and Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, had taken over the kingdom, Onias’s brother Jason obtained the high priesthood by corruption, 8having promised the king, at an audience, silver amounting to three hundred and sixty talents, and eighty talents more from another source of revenue. 9Besides this he undertook to pay another hundred and fifty if he were permitted, under his authority, to establish a gymnasium and a training school for youths and to enroll the people of Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch. 10The king agreed, and as soon as Jason had seized the office he began bringing his fellow countrymen over to the Greek way of life. 11He set aside the royal privileges granted to the Jews through John, whose son Eupolemus led the embassy to the Romans to seek friendship and alliance; and, doing away with the lawful institutions, he brought in new customs contrary to the law. 12He took pleasure in founding a gymnasium right below the acropolis, and he made the finest of the young men submit to wearing the broad-brimmed hat. 13So it was that Hellenism came to a kind of peak, and foreign ways gained ground, through the boundless unholiness of Jason, an ungodly man and no high priest, 14so that the priests were no longer eager to serve at the altar. They scorned the temple and neglected the sacrifices, and hurried off after the signal for the discus to share in the unlawful largesse laid on in the wrestling ground. 15They set no value on the honors of their fathers, and regarded Greek distinctions as the finest of all. 16That is why disaster closed in on them: the very people whose way of life they emulated and whom they wanted to resemble in everything became their enemies and their punishers. 17To commit ungodliness against the divine laws is no light thing — but the time that follows will make that clear. 18When the games held every fifth year were being celebrated at Tyre, and the king was present, 19the vile Jason sent delegates, as citizens of Antioch from Jerusalem, to bring three hundred silver drachmas for the sacrifice to Heracles. But the men who carried them asked that the money not be used for a sacrifice, because that was not proper, but be put toward some other expense. 20So the money was destined, by the will of the sender, for the sacrifice to Heracles, but because of the bearers it went to the fitting out of triremes. 21When Apollonius son of Menestheus was sent to Egypt for the enthronement of King Philometor, Antiochus learned that Philometor had turned against his interests, and he looked to his own security. He therefore came to Joppa and went on from there to Jerusalem. 22Jason and the city gave him a magnificent reception, and he was ushered in with torches and acclamations. After that he led his army into Phoenicia and encamped there.
Menelaus and the Murder of Onias
23Three years later Jason sent Menelaus, the brother of the Simon mentioned above, to carry the money to the king and see to some memoranda on pressing matters. 24But once he had been presented to the king, Menelaus flattered him with an air of great importance and diverted the high priesthood to himself, offering three hundred talents of silver more than Jason. 25He came back with the king’s orders in hand; he brought nothing that befitted the high priesthood, only the tempers of a brutal tyrant and the rages of a barbarous beast. 26So Jason, who had supplanted his own brother by intrigue, was himself supplanted by another and driven as a fugitive into the Ammonite country. 27Menelaus kept hold of the office, but he made no regular payment of the money he had promised the king. 28Sostratus, the commander of the acropolis, kept demanding it, since the collection of the revenues fell to him; and so the two of them were summoned by the king. 29Menelaus left his brother Lysimachus as his deputy in the high priesthood, and Sostratus left Crates, the commander of the Cypriots. 30While this was the state of affairs, the people of Tarsus and Mallus rose in revolt, because they had been handed over as a gift to Antiochis, the king’s concubine. 31The king therefore went off in haste to restore order, leaving as his deputy Andronicus, a man of high rank. 32Menelaus, thinking he had found his opportunity, pilfered some of the gold vessels of the temple and presented them to Andronicus; others he had already sold in Tyre and the surrounding cities. 33When Onias had clear proof of these things, he denounced Menelaus, after withdrawing to a place of asylum at Daphne, near Antioch. 34So Menelaus took Andronicus aside and urged him to lay hands on Onias. Andronicus went to Onias, and, won over to treachery, he pledged his right hand to him with oaths; and although he lay under Onias’s suspicion, he persuaded him to come out of the place of asylum, and then at once put him out of the way, with no regard for justice. 35This is why not only Jews but many people of other nations as well were outraged and deeply grieved at the man’s unjust murder. 36When the king returned from the region of Cilicia, the Jews of the city petitioned him about the senseless killing of Onias, and the Greeks shared their hatred of the wickedness. 37Antiochus was grieved to the depths of his soul; he was moved to pity and wept over the self-control and great decorum of the man who had died. 38Burning with anger, he at once stripped Andronicus of his purple, tore his clothes off him, and led him through the whole city to the very spot where he had committed his sacrilege against Onias; and there he removed the murderer from the world, the Lord repaying him with the punishment he deserved.
Lysimachus Killed, Menelaus Acquitted
39Lysimachus, with Menelaus’s approval, had committed many acts of temple robbery in the city, and when word of it spread outside, the people massed against Lysimachus, since many of the gold vessels had already been carried off. 40As the crowds rose up, brimming with fury, Lysimachus put some three thousand men under arms and was the first to resort to unjust force, with a certain Auranus at their head, a man well on in years and no less far gone in folly. 41Seeing Lysimachus’s assault, some snatched up stones, others thick pieces of wood, and some grabbed handfuls of the ashes lying nearby, and they hurled them helter-skelter at Lysimachus and his men. 42As a result they wounded many of them, struck some down, and put them all to flight; the temple robber himself they killed near the treasury. 43Over these matters a case was brought against Menelaus. 44When the king reached Tyre, the three men sent by the senate pleaded the case before him. 45Menelaus, already beaten, promised Ptolemy son of Dorymenes a considerable sum to win the king over. 46So Ptolemy took the king aside into a colonnade, as though for a breath of air, and changed his mind. 47The king acquitted Menelaus, the cause of all the evil, of the charges against him, and sentenced to death the unfortunate men who would have been set free as innocent even if they had pleaded their case before Scythians. 48So the men who had spoken up for the city and its people and for the sacred vessels swiftly paid the unjust penalty. 49Because of this, even the Tyrians, in their hatred of the wickedness, provided for their burial with great generosity. 50But Menelaus, through the greed of those in power, stayed in office, growing ever more rooted in wickedness and becoming the great plotter against his fellow citizens.
