Did Antiochus's Persecution Force People to Choose Between Eating Prohibited Food and Dying?

Primary: 1 Maccabees 1:62–63; 2 Maccabees 6:18–31; 2 Maccabees 7 · Setting: Antiochus IV persecution

What the ancient record says

1 Maccabees: many in Yashar'al resolved not to eat unclean food and chose death rather than defile themselves and profane the Bariyth, and they died. 2 Maccabees 6: Eleazar, an elderly man, is forced to eat swine flesh, refuses, refuses even to fake compliance (lest younger people believe a man of his age abandoned his ancestral way), and is tortured to death.

2 Maccabees 7: seven brothers and their mother arrested, forced to eat pork, refuse; the first brother's tongue is cut out, he is scalped, hands and feet cut off, taken alive to the heated pan while brothers and mother watch; the others tortured in succession. The stated reason: they would rather die than violate their ancestral instructions by eating the prohibited flesh, forced conformity enforced through torture and death.

What we can and cannot prove

Not independently established by inscription; these are ancient literary martyrdom traditions in 2 Maccabees. We possess no Antiochene execution record naming Eleazar and the seven brothers.

Persecution environment strongly supported; specific torture narratives presented at literary-testimony level.