1
This Simon now, of whom we spoke before, having been a betrayer of the money and of his country, slandered Onias as if he had provoked Heliodorus and been the worker of these evils.
2
Thus was he bold to call him a traitor who had served well the city and protected his own nation, and was so zealous for the laws.
3
But when their hatred went so far that murders were committed by one of Simon's faction,
4
Onias, seeing the danger of this contention and that Apollonius, being the governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, raged and increased Simon's malice,
5
he went to the king, not to be an accuser of his countrymen, but seeking the good of all, both public and private.
6
For he saw that it was impossible that the state should continue in peace and Simon leave his folly, unless the king looked thereunto.
7
But after the death of Seleucus when Antiochus, called Epiphanes, took the kingdom, Jason the brother of Onias labored underhandedly to be high priest,
8
promising unto the king by intercession three hundred and threescore talents of silver, and from another revenue eighty talents.
9
Beside this, he promised to assign a hundred and fifty more if he might have license to set up a place for exercise and for the training up of youth in the fashions of the heathen, and to designate them of Jerusalem by the name of Antiochians;