oods, for which the buyers offer a price. The interpretation given in νν. 35:38 would in either case err in assigning a separate application to each of the words of a formula which as a whole was a symbolical description of the occasion.
If the inscription given in Dn 5 be historical, it is probable that some euhemeristic explanation of its appearance, such as Prince suggests, should be adopted. The historical character of the name Belshazzar leads us to seek for more elements of fact in this chapter than in the rest of the Aramaic portion of the book ; and if it could be made out that the inscription had been misunderstood by the writer, there would be some probability in favour of its authenticity. It must be confessed, how- ever, that the assumption that the inscription is by a different hand from that of the rest of the tack opens a wide field for conjecture.
D. S. MARGOLIOUTH.
MENELAUS (Mevé\aos).—A usurping high priest in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. According to Josephus (Ant. X11. v. 1) he was originally name Onias, and was a brother of Onias ΠΙ. and Jason ; but the account in 2 Mac, which is probably more trustworthy, states that he was a Benjamite, a brother of Simon, the guardian of the temple, who
MENESTHEUS
MEONENIM, OAK OF
had instigated the attempt of Heliodorus to plunder the treasury (2 Mac 4%, cf. 34). In B.c. 171 Menelaus was sent by Jason to convey his promised tribute to Antiochus, and by offering the king a still larger bribe secured the high priesthood for himself. When Menelaus was established in Jerusalem this money still remained unpaid, and, a dispute on this matter having arisen between him and Sostratus, the Syrian commandant, they were both summoned to appear before Antiochus (2 Mac 4%-*4), When they arrived in Antioch, the king was absent in Cilicia. Menelaus therefore took the opportunity to secure the support of the vicegerent Andenicde by means of rich presents, which were commonly supposed to have been stolen from the temples. He alas persuaded Andronicus to murder treacherously the ex-high priest Onias {Π., who had taken refuge in the sanctuary at Daphne (vv.*®), Meanwhile the misconduct of Lysimachus (wh. see), the deputy left by Menelaus, had led to a serious riot at Jerusalem, and the Jews sent a deputation to meet the king at Tyre, and to make formal complaints against the high priest. Menelaus, who seems to have remained in Syria, again had recourse to bribery, and having won over an influential courtier, Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, he secured both his own acquittal and the execution of his accusers (vv.**-), uring the Egyptian expedition of Antiochus (B.c. 170), Jason attempted to regain his former position, and, suddenly attacking Jerusalem, Farce his rival to take refuge in the citadel. Antiochus treated this attack as an act of open rebellion. He marched on Jerusalem, gave orders for a terrible massacre, and plundered the temple of its most sacred treasures, receiving (it is said) in this sacrilege the assistance of Menelaus himself (2b. 55:16. 33... ef. 1 Mac 1-4), Menelaus was confirmed in power, but after the second attack of the Syrians on Jerusalem (1 Mac 1*-*, 2 Mac 5%-%5) we hear no more of him till the next reign. Wedo not know who exercised the office of high priest after the victories of Judas. But in B.c. 162, either before (2 Mae 13*8) or after (Jos. Ant. XII. ix. 7) the campaign of Lysias and Eupator, Menelaus met his death. He had incurred the anger of the Syrian chancellor, who represented him as the cause of all the troubles in Judea. He was accord- ingly sent by the king to Berwa, a town between Hierapolis and Antioch, and there executed. According to 2 Mae 1.6. he was carried to a certain tower, and thrown down into the ashes with which it was filled—a fitting retribution for one who had so grievously desecrated the holy altar at Jerusalem (cf. Rawlinson on 2 Mac in Speaker's Comm. ; Schiirer, HJP I. i. 204 f., 225 f.). H. A. WHITE.
MENESTHEUS (Μενεσθεύς B and prob. A; Mnes- theus).—The father of Apollonius, a general of Antiochus Epiphanes and chief collector of tribute (2 Mae 451, cf. 5%, 1 Mac 13). In the RV of 2 Mae 44, on the strength of a conjecture of Hort’s in a difficult passage, mention is again made of Apol- lonius the son of Menestheus (reading Μενεσθέως for μαίνεσθαι ἕως), but the person there intended seems rather to be Apollonius the son of Thraszeus (ef. 3°). See, further, under APOLLONIUS.
H. A. WHITE.
MENI (32; ἡ τύχη [but in some MSS, the render- ings of x and 2 being interchanged, ὁ δαίμων or τὸ δαιμόνιον); Aq. Theod. μεινει ; Vulg. omits ; Targ. pandnr their object of fear [i.e. their false god]; Syr. combining both clauses, x43 fortunes).—In Is 65" the name of a divinity, worshipped by the Israelites, ‘But ye... that prepare a table for Gad (Fortune), and that fill up mingled wine unto Méni (Destiny) ; ™ I will destine (323) you to the sword, ete. The root πὴ means in Heb. to number,
in Arab. to assign, apportion (ef. Heb. πὴ a portion); and there is Tittle doubt that Méni (properly, that which is apportioned or destined) was a per- sonification of destiny, and was a male deity oor- responding to Mandt, one of the ‘daughters of Allah,’ a great stone worshipped by the old heathen Arabians (see particulars from Ibn Kalbi and others in Wellh. Reste Arab. Heid. 22-25 [3, 25-29]), and mentioned in Koran 53”, and also to maniyya (plur. mandya, mand), an expression for fate (fates) used by Arabic poets. Mandédt—or rather (Nbld. ZDMG, 1887, p. 709) its plural Manawdt, ‘the fates’—occurs also in the Nabateean inscrip- tions of Higr, at about the period of the Christian era, as the name of one of the gods worshipped by the Nabatzans (Euting, Nab. Inschr. 25 3% ὃ 98 208 274 [=CIS τι. i. 1977, 198“ 8 ete. ; add also 320 F, and 271 the n. pr. ma72y]: 12D). The name Meni itself has been supposed to occur in the pr. n. 30739 found on some of the coins of the Achsemenide (Rédiger, in the app. to Ges. Thes. p. 97) ; and also in the inscription on an altar at Vaison in Provence (Orelli Henzen, 5862), ‘Belus Fortune rector, Menisque magister’ (where Belus, as the parallel Greek inscription shows, is the Bel of Apamea in Syria), quoted by Mordtmann, ZDMG xxxix. (1885) p. 44.* As Jewish tradition identified Gad with the planet Jupiter, and Arab. astrology called Jupiter the greater fortune, and Venus t lesser fortune, it has been conjectured (Ges., Del., Cheyne) that Meni denoted Venus. 5. R. DRIVER.