On the day appointed Oniah, supported by the principal Jewish inhabitants of Antioch and by not a few of the most respectable Greeks, appeared to substantiate his charges against the usurper Menelaüs. The evidence appeared to be overwhelming. The artizan who had been employed to fabricate the worthless imitations of the precious vessels told the whole story of the fraud with a fulness of detail which seemed to bear all the stamp of truth. Another witness related how he had carried one of the original articles to a goldsmith at Sidon, and actually produced a rough memorandum of its weight, which had been made upon the spot, to be afterwards embodied in the formal receipt. The line of defence adopted was bold, not to say impudent. The whole affair, according to Menelaüs, was a conspiracy on the part of the irreconcilable Jews to overthrow a loyal subject of the King. The witnesses, he declared, had been suborned, the documents had been forged. He then went on to bring a counter-charge against his accuser. And here he found a certain advantage in the transparent honesty of Oniah. “Do you acknowledge,” he asked the ex-high priest, “the validity of the appointments which our most noble lord Antiochus has made to the office of high priest?” Oniah frankly confessed that he did not. “Do you consider yourself to be still, according to the Law, in rightful possession of that office?” “I do.” “And bound to assert that right?” “By lawful means.” “And you hold all means to be lawful that are enjoined in the Law of Moses?” “I do.” “And among such means you would count the banishment from the precincts of the Holy City of all such as do not worship the Lord God of Israel?” Oniah felt that he was becoming entangled in this artful web of questions, and made an effort to break loose. “I appeal,” he cried, “most excellent Andronicus, to all who, in this city of Antioch, for these four years past have known my manner of life. You see sundry of them, nor of my own nation only, in the court this day. Ask them whether I have not lived in all peace and quietness, not seeking to disturb, either by word or deed, the dominions of my lord the King.”