This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[287]
WHEN Apollonius, the general of the Samaritan forces, heard this,
he took his army, and made haste to go against Judas, who met him, and
joined battle with him, and beat him, and slew many of his men, and among
them Apollonius himself, their general, whose sword being that which he
happened then to wear, he seized upon, and kept for himself; but he wounded
more than he slew, and took a great deal of prey from the enemy's camp,
and went his way. But when Seron, who was general of the army of Celesyria,
heard that many had joined themselves to Judas, and that he had about him
an army sufficient for fighting, and for making war, he determined to make
an expedition against him, as thinking it became him to endeavor to punish
those that transgressed the king's injunctions. He then got together an
army, as large as he was able, and joined to it the runagate and wicked
Jews, and came against Judas. He came as far as Bethhoron, a village of
Judea, and there pitched his camp; upon which Judas met him; and when he
intended to give him battle, he saw that his soldiers were backward to
fight, because their number was small, and because they wanted food, for
they were fasting, he encouraged them, and said to them, that victory and
conquest of enemies are not derived from the multitude in armies, but in
the exercise of piety towards God; and that they had the plainest instances
in their forefathers, who, by their righteousness, exerting themselves
on behalf of their own laws, and their own children, had frequently conquered
many ten thousands, - for innocence is the strongest army. By this speech
he induced his men to contenm the multitude of the enemy, and to fall upon
Seron. And upon joining battle with him, he beat the Syrians; and when
their general fell among the rest, they all ran away with speed, as thinking
that to be their best way of escaping. So he pursued them unto the plain,
and slew about eight hundred of the enemy; but the rest escaped to the
region which lay near to the sea.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.