7 if you had been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God.
8 Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious toward God.”
9 As he said this, the spearbearers bound him and drew him to the rack,
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 favor you bestow 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. 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 as old.
15 I was born and reared to the same end. We are bound to die also on behalf of the same cause.
16 So if you think it is proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then torment!”
17 As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.
18 Extended upon this, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.
19 Having heated sharp spits, they stabbed them into his back; and having pierced his sides, they burned away his entrails.
20 He, while tormented, said, “O good and holy contest, in which for the sake of religion, we kindred have been called to the arena of pain, and have not been conquered.
21 For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.
22 Armed with upright virtue, I also will depart with my kindred.
23 I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O inventor of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.