anniversary of the great profanation, the Temple was newly dedicated,
with songs and hymns of rejoicing, and a festival day was appointed,
which has been observed by the Jews ever since. The Temple rock and city
were again fortified so as to be able to hold out against their enemies,
and this year and the next were the most prosperous of the life of the
loyal-hearted Maccabee.

The great enemy of the Jews, Antiochus Epiphanes, was in the meantime
dying in great agony in Persia, and his son Antiochus Eupator was set on
the throne by Lysias, who brought him with an enormous army to reduce
the rising in Judea. The fight was again at Bethshur, where Judas had
built a strong fort on a point of rock that guarded the road to Hebron.
Lysias tried to take this fort, and Judas came to the rescue with his
little army, to meet the far mightier Syrian force, which was made more
terrific by possessing thirty war elephants imported from the Indian
frontier. Each of these creatures carried a tower containing thirty-two
men armed with darts and javelins, and an Indian driver on his neck; and
they had 1000 foot and 500 horse attached to the special following of
the beast, who, gentle as he was by nature, often produced a fearful
effect on the enemy; not so much by his huge bulk as by the terror he
inspired among men, and far more among horses. The whole host was spread
over the mountains and the valleys so that it is said that their bright
armor and gold and silver shields made the mountains glisten like lamps
of fire.

Still Judas pressed on to the attack, and his brother Eleazar,
perceiving that one of the elephants was more adorned than the rest,
thought it might be carrying the king, and devoted himself for his
country. He fought his way to the monster, crept under it, and stabbed
it from beneath, so that the mighty weight sank down on him and crushed