3
And not so fierce were the lions round Daniel, nor the furnace of Misael burning with most vehement fires as that natural love of children burned within her, when she beheld her seven sons tortured.
4
But with the reasoning of religion the mother quenched passions so great and powerful.
5
For we must consider also this: that, had the woman been faint hearted, as being their other, she would have lamented over them; and perhaps might have spoken thus:
6
Ah! wretched I, and many times miserable; who having born seven sons, have become the mother of none.
7
O seven useless childbirths, and seven profitless periods of labour, and fruitless givings of suck, and miserable nursings at the breast.
8
Vainly, for your sakes, O sons, have I endured many pangs, and the more difficult anxieties of rearing.
9
Alas, of my children, some of you unmarried, and some who have married to no profit, I shall not see your children, nor be felicitated as a grandmother.
10
Ah, that I who had many and fair children, should be a lone widow full of sorrows!
11
Nor, should I die, shall I have a son to bury me. But with such a lament as this the holy and God-fearing mother bewailed none of them.
12
Nor did she divert any of them from death, nor grieve for them as for the dead.
13
But as one possessed with an adamantine mind, and as one bringing forth again her full number of sons to immortality, she rather with supplication exhorted them to death in behalf of religion.