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