favored Ptolemy, and sent out
his soldiers to plunder them without mercy. He also spoiled the temple,
and put a stop to the constant practice of offering a daily sacrifice
of expiation for three years and six months. But Onias, the high
priest, fled to Ptolemy, and received a place from him in the Nomus of
Heliopolis, where he built a city resembling Jerusalem, and a temple
that was like its temple [1] concerning which we shall speak more in its
proper place hereafter.

2. Now Antiochus was not satisfied either with his unexpected taking
the city, or with its pillage, or with the great slaughter he had made
there; but being overcome with his violent passions, and remembering
what he had suffered during the siege, he compelled the Jews to dissolve
the laws of their country, and to keep their infants uncircumcised,
and to sacrifice swine's flesh upon the altar; against which they all
opposed themselves, and the most approved among them were put to death.
Bacchides also, who was sent to keep the fortresses, having these wicked
commands, joined to his own natural barbarity, indulged all sorts of the
extremest wickedness, and tormented the worthiest of the inhabitants,
man by man, and threatened their city every day with open destruction,
till at length he provoked the poor sufferers by the extremity of his
wicked doings to avenge themselves.

3. Accordingly Matthias, the son of Asamoneus, one of the priests who
lived in a village called Modin, armed himself, together with his own
family, which had five sons of his in it, and slew Bacchides with
daggers; and thereupon, out of the fear of the many garrisons [of the
enemy], he fled to the mountains; and so many of the people followed
him, that he was encouraged to come down from the mountains, and to give
battle to Antiochus's generals, when he beat them, and drove them out of
Judea. So he came to the government by this his success, and became the
prince of his own people by their own free consent, and then died,
leaving the government to Judas, his eldest son.

4. Now Judas, supposing that Antiochus would not lie still, gathered an
army out of his own countrymen, and was the first that made a league of
friendship with the Romans, and drove Epiphanes out of the country when
he had made a second expedition into it, and this by giving him a great
defeat there; and when he was warmed by this great success, he made an
assault upon the garrison that was in the city, for it had n