=1. Antiochus Epiphanes.=――Seleucus was succeeded on the Syrian throne by his brother Antiochus, surnamed by his flatterers Epiphanes the Illustrious, and by his more candid friends, Epimanes the Madman. By the date of his accession ancient Greece had lost her supremacy, and Rome was getting to be the great power in the world. All the little kings made their little wars, or planned their big projects, with a thought of Rome in the background. Antiochus was no exception. He had led an expedition against Egypt, and had been defeated by Rome. He knew the Roman policy was to break up empires, and to attract the pieces, as it were, to itself. The geographical position of Judea would make her a valuable Roman ally. He determined to get rid of this possibility by getting rid of the Jews. And besides this, the disputes and riots in Jerusalem over the priesthood were making the Jews and their religion personally unpleasant to Antiochus. He entered the capital 169 B.C., plundered the Temple, offered swine’s flesh on the altar, and put to death a great many of the inhabitants. =2. Antiochus’s Tyranny.=――That was only the beginning. He set up heathen idols in the Samaritan temple as well as in the Jerusalem one. The Jewish Scriptures were burned, and the reading of the law and the observance of the law forbidden on pain of death. Great rewards were offered to those who would renounce Judaism. A mother and her seven sons were separately and in succession tempted. ‘I can better bear to see them all die than for one of them to live as a coward,’ said the brave woman; and they took her at her word, and one after another the boys were led out to death. An old man, Eleazar by name, did his part, too, to prove that the calmness of age can be as steadfast as the impulse of youth. They tried bribes and they tried tortures on him; all to no avail. ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is One,’ was the last utterance of his dying lips.