Eleazar

Eleazar, though ninety years of age, bravely preferred to die a most glorious death than to purchase a hateful life by violating the law which forbade to the Israelite the use of swine's flesh. His friends, "moved with wicked pity", were willing to substitute lawful flesh, that Eleazar, feigning to have eaten the forbidden meat, might be delivered from death. But, considering "the dignity of his age … and the inbred honour of his grey head", Eleazar spurned this well-meant proposal, which if accepted, though securing his deliverance from punishment, might scandalize many young persons, and could not deliver from the hand of the Almighty. Having thus changed into rage the rejected sympathy of his friends, the holy man bravely endured his cruel torture, probably at Antioch, during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. (2 Maccabees 6:18-31; 1 Maccabees 1:57-63)