The seven Machabees were brothers martyred with their mother under Antiochus Epiphanes in about the year 150 before Christ. There is an account of their wonderful death in the Old Testament (2 Mach. 7). The seven brothers suffered, one after another, the most exquisite torments with invincible courage and constancy while their heroic mother stood by encouraging and strengthening them and last of all died herself with the same cheerfulness and intrepidity. Their victory was the more glorious because they triumphed over the king in person, who seems to have taken a journey to Jerusalem on purpose to endeavor by the most barbarous inventions of cruelty to overcome the inflexible constancy of men. Their relics, venerated at Antioch in the time of St. Jerome, were translated to Rome in the sixth century to the church of St. Peter’s Chains.