5
For there is a tower there, fifty cubits high, full of ashes, and it has a rim running around it that on all sides inclines precipitously into the ashes.
6
There they all push to destruction anyone guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes.
7
By such a fate it came about that Menelaus the lawbreaker died, without even burial in the earth.
8
And this was eminently just; because he had committed many sins against the altar whose fire and ashes were holy, he met his death in ashes.
9
The king with barbarous arrogance was coming to show the Jews things far worse than those that had been done in his father's time.