minds a growing contempt for their race and its religion.  Even some of the younger priests forsook the temple for the gymnasium.  Unconsciously but surely Judaism was drifting from its old moorings toward Hellenism, until the perfidy of its high priests and the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes aroused it to a full realization of its peril.  The apostates in Jerusalem found a leader in Jeshua, who had assumed the Greek name of Jason.  He was the brother of Onias iii, the reigning high priest, and had been sent to represent him at the Syrian court.  There he improved the opportunity by promising greater tribute to secure his appointment as high priest.  He was soon outbid, however, by a certain renegade named Menelaus, who with the aid of Syrian soldiers drove Jason from Jerusalem and took his place as head of the hellenizing party.  The first cause, therefore, of the Maccabean struggle was the apostasy of certain of the Jews themselves.  Apparently in large numbers they abandoned the traditions of their race, and assumed the Greek garb and customs, thus leading their Syrian rulers to believe that the hellenizing of the entire race would be comparatively easy.

VI.  Character of Antiochus Epiphanes.  The ruler who by his injustice and persecutions fanned the smouldering flame of Jewish patriotism into a mighty conflagration was Antiochus Epiphanes.  As a youth he had been educated at Rome with the profligate sons of those who ruled the Imperial City.  The Greek and Roman historians, especially Polybius, give vivid portraits of this tyrannical king.  In him the prevailing passion for Hellenism found extreme expression.  To dazzle his contemporaries by the splendor of his building enterprises and by his dramatic display was his chief ambition.  In gratifying thus his selfish ambition he drained the resources of his kingdom, and was therefore obliged to resort to extreme measures to replenish his treasury.  In 170 B.C. he made a successful campaign into Egypt.  Two years later he again invaded the rich land of the Nile, only to find himself confronted by a Roman general, who peremptorily ordered him to retreat.  Rome was already the chief power in the eastern Mediterranean, and Antiochus, although in a rage, wisely decided to retire.  It was at this inopportune moment that he found Jerusalem in revolt, misled by a false report and by the renegade high priest Jason.  Antiochus not only improved this opportunity to loot the temple and slay many of the inhabitants, but from this time on conceived a bitter antipathy to the Jewish race.  This antipathy he shared in common with all the Greek world, for already, as a result of the peculiar religion and customs of the Jews and their success in commercial pursuits, that which is known to-day as the anti-Semitic spirit was fully developed.  One of Antiochus’s chief ambitions was also to hellenize all his subjects, and the Jews alone offered opposition to the realization of this ambition.  Hence they could expect no mercy at the hands of this selfish, capricious despot.