4 Maccabees 15:21-23

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

²¹ Neither the melodies of sirens nor the songs of swans attract the attention of their hearers as did the voices of the children in torture calling to their mother. ²² How great and how many torments the mother then suffered as her sons were tortured on the wheel and with the hot irons! ²³ But pious reason, giving her heart a man’s courage in the very midst of her passions, strengthened her to disregard, for the time, her parental love.^(A)