[Avodah] asarah harugei malchut

[Eli Turkel]

: The piyut doesn't say anything of the sort.  The wicked king claims to
: be exacting justice for the sale of Yosef, and says he would have killed
: the shvatim themselves if they were still alive, but since they aren't
: he'll kill these 10 as their proxies.  None of this is supposed to be
: just or legitimate; the paytan is just showing the wickedness of the king,
: that not only did he kill these 10 tzadikim, but he dressed the murder up
: as some sort of mitzva >>

Regardless of how we interpret the killing of the 10 Martyrs we must remember
that this story is made up. The various Martyrs lived over a span of some 50-100
years and were killed under several different Roman emperors.
Hence, it is difficult to historically consider that Roman emperors really
connected anything to the sale of Yosef. This is what the paytan wishes to teach
rather than history

BTW does anyone know when this piyut/medrash was written?

-- 
Eli Turkel