2 Maccabees 4:46-48

Revised Standard Version

⁴⁶ Therefore Ptol′emy, taking the king aside into a colonnade as if for refreshment, induced the king to change his mind. ⁴⁷ Menela′us, the cause of all the evil, he acquitted of the charges against him, while he sentenced to death those unfortunate men, who would have been freed uncondemned if they had pleaded even before Scyth′ians. ⁴⁸ And so those who had spoken for the city and the villages^[a] and the holy vessels quickly suffered the unjust penalty.