1And when he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,
2I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue.
3But I have come of my own accord, that by the death of me, you may owe heavenly vengeance a punishment for more crimes.
4O thou hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that thou thus revellest in our blood?
5Does it seem evil to thee that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?
6But this is worthy of honours, not of torments;
6ahadst thou been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God.
6bBehold, now, being alien from God, thou makest war against those who are religious toward God.
9As he said this, the spearbearers bound him, and drew him to the catapelt:
10to which binding him at his knees, and fastening them with iron fetters, they bent down his loins upon the wedge of the wheel; and his body was then dismembered, scorpion-fashion.
11With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,
12A great favour thou bestowest upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.
13He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out; and on the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said,
14I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old;
15for having been born and reared unto the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause.
16So that if thou think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean;—torment!
17As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.
18Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.
19And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.
20And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we brothers have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.
21For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.
22Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren.
23I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.
24We six youths have destroyed thy tyranny.
25For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, thy destruction?
26Your fire is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your violence harmless.
27For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.
