4 Maccabees 15:22

²⁰When thou didst see children’s flesh heaped upon children’s flesh that had been torn off, hands upon hands cut off, heads decapitated upon heads, dead falling upon the dead, and a choir of children turned through torture into a burying ground, thou lamentedst not.

²¹Not so do siren melodies, or songs of swans, attract the hearers to listening, O voices of children calling upon your mother in the midst of torments!

— 4 Maccabees 15:22 —

²³But religious reasoning, having strengthened her courage in the midst of sufferings, enabled her to forego, for the time, parental love.

²⁴Although beholding the destruction of seven children, the noble mother, after one embrace, stripped off her feelings through faith in God.