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And then there is the church of the Maccabees, and the cauldron in which they and their mother Solomona were boiled by a wicked king for refusing to eat swine's flesh." "Oh, peremptory king! and pig-headed Maccabees! I had eaten bacon with my pork liever than change places at the fire with my meat." "What scurvy words are these? it was their faith."
And it was a martyr's trial that was now looming before the imprisoned maiden: she would, like Solomona and her sons, have to renounce either her faith or her life.
Mattathias is gone; Solomona and her children are all gone; Judas, with his gallant band, is like a lion at bay with the hunters closing in an ever-narrowing circle around him. Apollonius has been vanquished, Seron defeated by our hero; but now Nicanor and Giorgias, with the forces of Ptolemy, upwards of forty thousand men, are combining to crush him by their overwhelming numbers!
There was a brief pause, to Zarah inexpressibly awful; then Antiochus Epiphanes, he who had looked on the dying agonies of Solomona and her sons, said in his stern voice of command, "I am not wont to bid thrice, and woe to those who presume to neglect my bidding. Throw incense on that fire, or the consequences be upon your own head.
But the Lord gives strength to his people, to resist and to conquer, whether the temptation be from fear or from love. You are the worthy kinsman of Solomona, who gave life itself for the faith." "Perhaps the sacrifice of life is not the hardest to make," Zarah dreamily replied. "Solomona gave her seven sons," said Hadassah.
Solomona, my kinswoman, and her seven sons all met in that solemn assembly; the bright-eyed Asahel, the fearless Mahali, young Joseph, who was my merry playmate when ten years ago we came from Bethsura hither!
The courtier had been present at the trial of Solomona and her brave sons without making the slightest effort to save them, though their fate had moved him to something more than pity. But though Pollux could to a certain extent trample down compunction, and force his conscience to silence, he had not perfect command over his nerves.
"Was not this Greek, by your own showing, present at the martyrdom of the blessed saint Solomona? was he not tried for his life at her grave, where he was discovered coiling like a serpent in the darkness? is he not one of a race of idolaters, worshippers of images made by man's hand?"
"Blessed, oh, thrice blessed art thou, Solomona, my sister, richest of mothers in Israel! Thou hast borne seven, and amongst them not one has been false to his God. Thy diadem lacks no gem thy circle of love is unbroken.
Though related both to Solomona and Hadassah, Zarah had neither the calm fortitude of the one, nor the exalted spirituality of the other; she deemed herself alike incapable of uttering the inspired words of a prophetess, or showing the firm endurance of a martyr.
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