1
And more that this, they even urged them on to this ill-treatment; so that they not only despised pains themselves, but they even got the better of their affections of brotherly love.
2
O reasonings more royal than a king, and freer than freemen!
3
Sacred and harmonious concert of the seven brethren as concerning piety!
4
None of the seven youths turned cowardly, or shrank back from death.
5
But all of them, as though running the road to immortality, hastened on to death through tortures.
6
For just as hands and feet are moved sympathetically with the directions of the soul, so those holy youths agreed unto death for religion's sake, as through the immortal soul of religion.
7
O holy seven of harmonious brethren! for as the seven days of creation, about religion,
8
so the youths, circling around the number seven, annulled the fear of torments.
9
We now shudder at the recital of the affliction of those young men; but they not only beheld, and not only heard the immediate execution of the threat, but undergoing it, persevered; and that through the pains of fire.