"Then, again, hear the tale of Eleazar, who was surnamed the Beast-slayer, what he did when Judas the Hammer fought the army of King Antiochus at the House of Zachariah. The king had brought a score of elephants with him. You know the beast if you come from Africa, and that he is not so terrible as he looks, and is scarcely more apt to hurt his foes than his friends. But let me tell you that he who sees him for the first time without trembling is braver than most men. So it happened that our soldiers were not a little terrified at the sight. Then this Eleazar, who was brother to Judas, seeing that one of the beasts was bigger than the rest, and more splendidly equipped, as if he carried the king himself, ran furiously into the company in which it was--for each beast had a company of soldiers round it--slaying right and left as he ran till he came to the beast. The creature's breast and shoulders were protected with plates of brass, but his belly, as being out of reach, was left unguarded, and here it was that Eleazar dealt him a great blow with his sword, and continued to strike him till the beast fell dead and crushed this brave Jew in his fall."
As for the young Greek, he was astonished to find that this fanatical and superstitious people--for so he had always been accustomed to think of the Jews--could boast of warriors and statesmen quite equal to any that his own nation had produced. Leonidas himself and his Three Hundred had not shown a more desperate courage at Thermopylæ than Judas Maccabæus and his scanty band of followers had displayed at Elaim; Themistocles had not exhibited a more subtle and skilful statecraft than Jonathan. And while his admiration was extorted for the Jew, he was equally constrained to despise the Greek. Antiochus the Splendid, as he called himself, the Crazy as every one outside the circle of court sycophants and flatterers called him,[29] made but a very poor figure by the side of Judas the Hammer.
Another highly disturbing fact for the young man was this. Where did these patriots find allies? Not in any Greek kingdom--these were all banded together against them,--but in Rome. It was to Rome that Judas had turned in his extremity, and in Rome that he found help. The old man's son had acted as secretary to the embassy which Judas had sent on this occasion, and had given his impressions of what he saw and heard in a letter to his father, which the old man now showed to his guest. It ran thus: