2. And him that was the benefactor of the city, and the guardian of his fellow countrymen, and a zealot for the laws, he dared to call a conspirator against the state.
3. But when the growing enmity between them waxed so great, that even murders were perpetrated through one of Simon’s trusted followers,
4. Onias, seeing the danger of the contention, and that Apollonius the son of Menestheus, the governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, was increasing Simon’s malice,
5. betook himself to the king, not to be an accuser of his fellow-citizens, but looking to the good of all the people, both public and private;
6. for he saw that without the king’s providence it was impossible for the state to obtain peace any more, and that Simon would not cease from his madness.
7. But when Seleucus was deceased, and Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, succeeded to the kingdom, Jason the brother of Onias supplanted his brother in the high priesthood,
8. having promised to the king at an audience three hundred and threescore talents of silver, and out of another fund eighty talents;
9. and beside this, he undertook to assign a hundred and fifty more, if it might be allowed him through the king’s authority to set him up a Greek place of exercise and form a body of youths to be trained therein, and to register the inhabitants of Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch.