2. and that with him was Lysias, his guardian, who was in charge of the government. They led a Greek army of one hundred and ten thousand foot soldiers, fifty-three hundred cavalry, twenty-two elephants, and three hundred chariots armed with scythes.
3. Menelaus also joined them, and with great duplicity kept urging Antiochus on, not for the welfare of his country, but in the hope of being established in office.
4. But the King of kings aroused the anger of Antiochus against the scoundrel. When the king was shown by Lysias that Menelaus was to blame for all the trouble, he ordered him to be taken to Beroea and executed there in the customary local method.
5. There is at that place a tower seventy-five feet high, full of ashes, with a circular rim sloping down steeply on all sides toward the ashes.
6. Anyone guilty of sacrilege or notorious for certain other crimes is brought up there and then hurled down to destruction.
7. In such a manner was Menelaus, that transgressor of the law, fated to die, deprived even of burial.
8. It was altogether just that he who had committed so many sins against the altar with its pure fire and ashes, in ashes should meet his death.
9. The king was advancing, his mind full of savage plans for inflicting on the Jews things worse than those they suffered in his father’s time.
10. When Judas learned of this, he urged the people to call upon the Lord day and night, now more than ever, to help them when they were about to be deprived of their law, their country, and their holy temple;