Antiochus IV (Seleucid)

Antiochus IV, son of Antiochus III, ruled the Seleucid Empire from −175 to −164 and called himself Epiphanes, "god manifest"; Polybius reports that critics nicknamed him Epimanes, "the madman." He sold the high priesthood first to Jason and then to Menelaus, plundered the Temple treasury, and in −168 was forced out of Egypt when the Roman envoy Popilius Laenas drew a circle in the sand around him and demanded an answer before he stepped out. In −167 he banned circumcision, Sabbath observance and Torah scrolls, and on 15 Kislev an "abomination of desolation" was set on the altar, while the Temple was rededicated to Zeus Olympios (1 Maccabees 1; 2 Maccabees 6).

The persecution produced the martyrs of 2 Maccabees 6–7, the aged scribe Eleazar and the mother with her seven sons, and the uprising begun by the priest Mattathias at Modiin. Judah the Maccabee retook the Temple and rededicated it on 25 Kislev −164, the origin of Hanukkah, around the time Antiochus died on campaign in Persia. Daniel 11 is widely read as a veiled account of his reign.