1
In the one hundred forty-ninth year word came to Judas and his men that Antiochus Eupator was coming with a great army against Judea,
2
and with him Lysias, his guardian, who had charge of the government. Each of them had a Greek force of one hundred ten thousand infantry, five thousand three hundred cavalry, twenty-two elephants, and three hundred chariots armed with scythes.
3
Menelaus also joined them and with utter hypocrisy urged Antiochus on, not for the sake of his country's welfare, but because he thought that he would be established in office.
4
But the King of kings aroused the anger of Antiochus against the scoundrel; and when Lysias informed him that this man was to blame for all the trouble, he ordered them to take him to Beroea and to put him to death by the method that is customary in that place.
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.