11:1 And when he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,

11:2 I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue.

11:3 But I have come of my own accord, that by the death of me, you may owe heavenly vengeance a punishment for more crimes.

11:4 O thou hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that thou thus revellest in our blood?

11:5 Does it seem evil to thee that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?

11:6 But this is worthy of honours, not of torments;

11:9 As he said this, the spearbearers bound him, and drew him to the catapelt:

11:10 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.

11:11 With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,

11:12 A great favour thou bestowest upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.

11:13 He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out; and on the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said,

11:14 I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old;

11:15 for having been born and reared unto the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause.

11:16 So that if thou think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean;—torment!

11:17 As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.

11:18 Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.

11:19 And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.

11:20 And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we brothers have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.

11:21 For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

11:22 Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren.

11:23 I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

11:24 We six youths have destroyed thy tyranny.

11:25 For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, thy destruction?

11:26 Your fire is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your violence harmless.

11:27 For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.