4 Maccabees 15:23

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!

²²With what and what manner of torments was the mother herself tortured, as her sons were undergoing the wheel and the fires!

— 4 Maccabees 15:23 —

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

²⁵For just as in a council room, beholding in her own soul vehement counselors, nature and parentage and love of her children, and the racking of her children,