15. for having been born and reared to the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause.
16. So that if you⌃ think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then torment!
17. As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.
18. Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.
19. And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.
20. And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we brethren have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.
21. For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.
22. Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren.
23. I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.
24. We six youths have destroyed your tyranny.
25. For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction?
26. Your fire is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your violence harmless.
27. For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.