13 In the one hundred and forty-ninth year, news was brought to Yehudah and his company that Antiokos (Antiochus) Eupator was coming with multitudes against Yehudah, 2 and with him Lusias his guardian and chancellor, each having a Greek force of one hundred and ten thousand infantry, five thousand and three hundred cavalry, twenty-two elephants, and three hundred chariots armed with scythes.

3 And Menelaos also joined himself with them, and with great hypocrisy encouraged Antiokos, not for the saving of his country, but because he thought that he would be set over the government. 4 But the King of kings stirred up the anger of Antiokos against the wicked wretch. When Lusias informed him that this man was the cause of all the evils, the king commanded to bring him to Beroia, and to put him to death in the way customary in that place. 5 Now there is in that place a tower that is fifty cubits high, full of ashes, and it had all around it a circular[fn] rim sloping steeply on every side into the ashes. 6 Here one who is guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes is pushed down to destruction. 7 By such a fate it happened that the breaker of the law, Menelaos, died, without obtaining so much as a grave in the earth, and that justly; 8 for inasmuch as he had perpetrated many sins against[fn] the altar, whose fire and whose ashes were holy, he received his death in ashes.