4 Maccabees 1:9

⁷I might prove to you, from many other considerations, that religious reasoning is sole master of the passions;

⁸but I shall prove it with the greatest force from the fortitude of Eleazar, and seven brethren, and their mother, who suffered death in defense of virtue.

— 4 Maccabees 1:9 —

¹⁰For their virtues, then, it is right that I should commend those men who died with their mother at this time in behalf of rectitude; and for their honors, I may count them happy.

¹¹For they, winning admiration not only from men in general, but even from their persecutors, for their manliness and endurance, became the means of the destruction of the tyranny against their nation, having conquered the tyrant by their endurance, so that by them their country was purified.