"The kingdom of Greece was a terror to the world, but the priest, with faith and not with weapons, boldly met the terror and defeated it. 'Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the woman?' (Song, 6. 10). She is no other than Esther, who like the morning star was the light brought to Israel in the dark days of Media. 'Clear as the sun and terrible as an army with banners' (Song, 6. 10): these were no other than Mattathias the High Priest and his sons, who like an army with their banners stood up against the evil power of Greece, from which every power fled as one flees from the strength of the mid-day sun. Their army and their banners were faith in their God; they were stimulated by the words of the prophet (Joel 4. 6-10), 'The children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians . . . Beat your ploughshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong.'"
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15, Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 96
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece
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Ancient Greece
(Greek: Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a north-eastern Mediterranean civilisation, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (c. 600 AD), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC. It was also ruled by the Roman Empire from the 1st century BC until its collapse. I
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