Eupator Besieges the Temple

About this time King Antiochus, as he was passing through the upper provinces, heard that there was a city in Persia called Elymais, remarkable for its wealth, and in it a costly temple of Artemis, full of offerings of every kind, and besides these, weapons and breastplates which, he learned, had been left there by Alexander, the son of Philip and king of the Macedonians. Moved by these things, he set out for Elymais, assaulted it, and besieged it. But those inside were not frightened by his assault or by his siege; they held out against him stoutly, and he was thrust back from his hopes. They drove him away from the city, then went out after him and pursued him, so that he came to Babylon a fugitive, having lost a great part of his army. [a]

While he was grieving over this failure, some people brought him word of the defeat of the commanders he had left behind to make war on the Jews, and of how strong the Jews had already become. When this worry was added to the first, he was thrown into confusion, and from despondency he fell ill. The illness dragged on and his sufferings grew, until he understood that he was going to die. So he called his friends together and told them how severe his illness was, and he made it plain that he was suffering these things because he had afflicted the Jewish nation, plundering their temple and showing contempt for their God. And as he was saying this, he breathed his last. So one may well wonder at Polybius of Megalopolis, who, though a good man, says that Antiochus died because he had wanted to plunder the temple of Artemis in Persia; for to plan a deed and not go on to do it does not deserve punishment. And if Polybius thinks that Antiochus lost his life for that reason, it is far more likely that the king died for his sacrilege against the temple in Jerusalem. But I will not quarrel on this point with those who think the cause the man from Megalopolis gives is truer than ours.

Before he died, Antiochus called Philip, one of his companions, and made him guardian of his kingdom. He gave him his diadem, his robe, and his ring, and ordered him to carry them to his son Antiochus and give them to him, and he begged him to see to the boy’s upbringing and to keep the kingdom safe for him. Antiochus died in the hundred and forty-ninth year. It was Lysias who announced his death to the people, and he appointed his son Antiochus king, for he had the boy in his care, and called him Eupator. [c]

At this time the garrison in the citadel of Jerusalem and the Jewish renegades did the Jews a great deal of harm. The soldiers of the garrison would rush out suddenly on those who were going up to the temple to offer sacrifice and kill them, for the citadel overhung the temple. Since this kept happening to them, Judas resolved to destroy the garrison. He gathered all the people and besieged those in the citadel vigorously. This was the hundred and fiftieth year of the rule of the house of Seleucus. He built engines of war, raised earthworks, and pressed hard and steadily to take the citadel. But many of the renegades inside went out by night into the country, gathered some others like themselves, wicked men, and came to King Antiochus. They begged him not to let them be overlooked while they suffered terrible things at the hands of their own people, and that on account of his father, because they had abandoned the religion of their fathers and embraced the one he had commanded. There was a danger, they said, that the citadel and the garrison the king had placed there would be taken by Judas and his men unless he sent them some help. When the boy Antiochus heard this, he was angry. He sent for his commanders and his friends and ordered them to gather mercenaries, together with the men of his own kingdom who were of an age to serve. And an army was gathered of about a hundred thousand foot soldiers, twenty thousand horsemen, and thirty-two elephants. [d]

So the king took this force and set out from Antioch, with Lysias in command of the whole army. He came into Idumea and went up from there to Beth-zur, a very strong city and hard to take; he surrounded it and laid siege to it. The people of Beth-zur held out stoutly; they sallied out against him and burned his siege engines, and a great deal of time was spent on the siege. When Judas heard that the king was coming, he gave up the siege of the citadel and went to meet him. He pitched his camp in the narrow passes, at a place called Beth-zechariah, nearly nine miles from the enemy. The king marched away from Beth-zur and brought his army to the passes and to Judas’s camp, and at daybreak he drew up his army for battle. Because the ground was so narrow that the elephants could not be ranged side by side, he made them follow one another, and around each elephant went a thousand foot soldiers and five hundred horsemen. The elephants carried high towers and archers. The rest of his force he sent up the mountains on either side, with his Friends at their head. Then he ordered the army to raise the war cry and attacked the enemy, uncovering the golden and bronze shields so that a brilliant glare flashed from them, and the mountains rang with their shouting. When Judas saw this, he was not dismayed. He met the enemy bravely and killed about six hundred of the advance troops. His brother Eleazar, whom they called Avaran, saw the tallest of the elephants armed with royal breastplates and, thinking the king was on it, threw himself into great danger. He rushed at it with the utmost daring, killed many of those around the elephant, and scattered the rest; then he slipped under its belly, stabbed it, and killed the elephant. It fell on Eleazar and crushed him with its weight. So, after courageously destroying many of the enemy, this man ended his life in this way. [e]

Seeing the strength of the enemy, Judas withdrew to Jerusalem and prepared for a siege. Antiochus sent part of his army to Beth-zur to make war on it, and he himself came to Jerusalem with the rest of his forces. The people of Beth-zur, terrified at his strength and seeing their provisions running short, surrendered after receiving oaths that they would suffer no harm from the king. When Antiochus had taken the city, he did them no other injury but only sent them out naked, and he placed a garrison of his own in the city. He spent a long time besieging the temple in Jerusalem, for those inside defended it stoutly; against every engine the king set up against them, they set up a counter-engine of their own. But their food had failed them. The stored produce had been used up, and the land had not been worked that year but had remained unsown, because it was the seventh year, in which our law requires us to leave the country idle. So many of the besieged slipped away for lack of necessities that only a few were left in the temple. [h]

Such was the situation of those besieged in the temple. But Lysias the general and the king received word that Philip was coming against them from Persia and was trying to bring the government into his own hands. They were minded to give up the siege and march against Philip, yet they decided not to let the soldiers and the officers know it. Instead, the king ordered Lysias to speak to the soldiers and officers in public without revealing anything about Philip. He was to point out that the siege would be a very long one; that the place was strong; that their food was already running short; that many affairs of the kingdom needed setting in order; and that it seemed much better to make a treaty with the besieged and friendship with their whole nation, allowing them to live by the laws of their fathers, since it was the loss of these laws that had driven them to war, and so to go home. When Lysias had said this, the army and the officers were pleased with the plan.

So the king sent to Judas and those besieged with him, and promised them peace and leave to live by the laws of their fathers. They gladly accepted his terms, and when they had received oaths and pledges, they came out of the temple. But when Antiochus entered it and saw how strong the place was, he broke his oaths and ordered the army to stand by and pull the wall down to the ground. When he had done this, he went back to Antioch, taking with him Onias the high priest, who was also called Menelaus. For Lysias had advised the king to put Menelaus to death if he wanted the Jews to stay quiet and give him no trouble, since this man had begun the evils by persuading the king’s father to force the Jews to abandon the religion of their fathers. So the king sent Menelaus to Berea in Syria and put him to death there. He had been high priest ten years, a wicked and impious man, who had forced his own people to break their laws so that he himself might rule. After the death of Menelaus, Alcimus, also called Jacimus, became high priest. King Antiochus, seeing that Philip was already master of the government, made war on him, took him prisoner, and killed him. As for Onias, the son of the high priest, who, as we said before, had been left a child when his father died: when he saw that the king had killed his uncle Menelaus and given the high priesthood to Alcimus, who was not of the high priestly line, the king having been persuaded by Lysias to move the office from that family to another house, he fled to Ptolemy, king of Egypt. Treated with honor by him and by his wife Cleopatra, he asked for and received a place in the district of Heliopolis, where he built a temple like the one in Jerusalem. But we will have a better occasion to tell of this. [i]