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.
10. And when the king had given assent, and he had gotten possession of the office, he forthwith brought over them of his own race to the Greek fashion.
11. And setting aside the royal ordinances of special favor to the Jews, granted by the means of John the father of Eupolemus, who went on the ambassage to the Romans for friendship and alliance, and seeking to overthrow the lawful modes of life, he brought in new customs forbidden by the law:
12. for he eagerly established a Greek place of exercise under the citadel itself; and caused the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek cap.
13. And thus there was an extreme of Greek fashions, and an advance of an alien religion, by reason of the exceeding profaneness of Jason, that ungodly man and no high priest;
14. so that the priests had no more any zeal for the services of the altar: but despising the sanctuary, and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to enjoy that which was unlawfully provided in the palaestra, after the summons of the discus;