Plutarch[25] also relates, that in his time some of the Egyptians who worshipped a dog, eat one of the fishes, which others of the Egyptians adored as their deity; and that upon this, the fish eaters laid hold on the other’s dogs, and sacrificed and eat them; and that this gave occasion to a bloody battle, in which a great number were destroyed on both sides. ----- Footnote 25: De Isid. et Osir. p. 380. Edit. Franc. ----- [Illustration] SECT. IV. _Persecutions by Antiochus Epiphanes._ Antiochus Epiphanes, though a very wicked prince, yet was a great zealot for his religion, and endeavoured to propagate it by all the methods of the most bloody persecution. Josephus[26] tells us, that after he had taken Jerusalem, and plundered the temple, he caused an altar to be built in it, upon which he sacrificed swine, which were an abomination to the Jews, and forbidden by their laws. Not content with this, he compelled them to forsake the worship of the true God, and to worship such as he accounted deities; building altars and temples to them in all the towns and streets, and offering swine upon them every day. He commanded them to forbear circumcising their children, grievously threatening such as should disobey his orders. He also appointed overseers, or bishops, to compel the Jews to come in, and do as he had ordered them. Such as rejected it, were continually persecuted, and put to death, with the most grievous tortures. He ordered them to be cruelly scourged, and their bodies to be tore, and, before they expired under their tortures, to be crucified. The women, and the children which they circumcised, were, by his command, hanged; the children hanging from the necks of their crucified parents. Wherever he found any of the sacred books, or of the law, he destroyed them, undoubtedly to prevent the propagation of heretical opinions, and punished with death such as kept them. The same author tells us also, in his History of the Maccabees, that Antiochus put forth an edict, whereby he made it death for any to observe the Jewish religion, and compelled them, by tortures, to abjure it. The inhuman barbarities he exercised upon Eleazar and the Maccabees, because they would not renounce their religion, and sacrifice to his Grecian gods, are not, in some circumstances, to be paralleled by any histories of persecution extant; and will ever render the name and memory of that illustrious tyrant execrable and infamous. It was on the same religious account that he banished the philosophers[27] from all parts of his kingdom; the charge against them being, “their corrupting the youth,” _i. e._ teaching them notions of the gods, different from the common orthodox opinions which were established by law; and commanded Phanias, that such youths as conversed with them should be hanged. ----- Footnote 26: Antiq. Jud. l. 12. c. 5. Footnote 27: Athen. l. 12. c. 12. ----- [Illustration]