Most of them were monks, devoted to a life of ascetic solitude, and were about twenty-three in number. Not long afterwards the deacon who had been sent by our beloved Damasus, bishop of Rome, to bring us letters of consolation and communion, was led publicly through the town by executioners, with his hands tied behind his back like some notorious criminal. After sharing the tortures inflicted on murderers, he was terribly scourged with stones and bits of lead about his very neck. [752] He went on board ship to sail, like the rest, with the mark of the sacred cross upon his brow; with none to aid and none to tempt him he was despatched to the copper mines of Phennesus. During the tortures inflicted by the magistrate on the tender bodies of little boys, some have been left lying on the spot deprived of holy rites of burial, though parents and brothers and kinsfolk, and indeed the whole city, begged that this one consolation might be given them. But alas for the inhumanity of the judge, if indeed he can be called judge who only condemns! They who had contended nobly for the true religion were assigned a worse fate than a murderer's, their bodies lying, as they did, unburied. The glorious champions were thrown to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey. [753] Those who were anxious for conscience' sake to express sympathy with the parents were punished by decapitation, as though they had broken some law. What Roman law, nay what foreign sentiment, ever inflicted punishment for the expression of sympathy with parents? What instance is there of the perpetration of so illegal a deed by any one of the ancients? The male children of the Hebrews were indeed once ordered to be slain by Pharaoh, but his edict was suggested by envy and by fear. How far greater the inhumanity of our day than of his. How preferable, if there be a choice in unrighteousness, their wrongs to ours. How much better; if what is illegal can be called good or bad, though in truth iniquity is always iniquity.
I am writing what is incredible, inhuman, awful, savage, barbarous, pitiless, cruel. But in all this the votaries of the Arian madness pranced, as it were, with proud exultation, while the whole city was lamenting; for, as it is written in Exodus, "there was not a house in which there was not one dead." [754]
The men whose appetite for iniquity was never satisfied planned new agitation. Ever wreaking their evil will in evil deeds, they darted the peculiar venom of their iniquity at the bishops of the province, using the aforesaid treasurer Magnus as the instrument of their unrighteousness.
Some they delivered to the Senate, some they trapped at their good pleasure, leaving no stone unturned in their anxiety to hunt in all from every quarter to impiety, going about in all directions, and like the devil, the proper father of heresy, they sought whom they might devour. [755]
In all, after many fruitless efforts, they drove into exile to Dio-Cæsarea, [756] a city inhabited by Jews, murderers of the Lord, eleven of the bishops of Egypt, all of them men who from childhood to old age had lived an ascetic life in the desert, had subdued their inclinations to pleasure by reason and by discipline, had fearlessly preached the true faith of piety, had imbibed the pious doctrines, had again and again won victory against demons, were ever putting the adversary out of countenance by their virtue, and publicly posting the Arian heresy by wisest argument. Yet like Hell, [757] not satisfied with the death of their brethren, fools and madmen as they were, eager to win a reputation by their evil deeds, they tried to leave memorials in all the world of their own cruelty. For lo now they roused the imperial attention against certain clerics of the catholic church who were living at Antioch, together with some excellent monks who came forward to testify against their evil deeds. They got these men banished to Neocæsarea [758] in Pontus, where they were soon deprived of life in consequence of the sterility of the country. Such tragedies were enacted at this period, fit indeed to be consigned to silence and oblivion, but given a place in history for the condemnation of the men who wag their tongues against the Only begotten, and infected as they were with the raving madness of blasphemy, strive not only to aim their shafts at the Master of the universe, but further waged a truceless war against His faithful servants.
[732] ethnikos, "foreigner" a "gentile." Another common term for "heathen" in ecclesiastical Greek is Ellen, but neither "Gentile" nor "Greek" expresses the required sense so well as "Heathen," which, like the cognate "Pagan," simply denotes a countryman and villager, and marks the age when Christianity was found to be mainly in towns.
[733] Vide note on page 120.
[734] Eph. v. 12
[735] Romans ix. 22
[736] Joel i. 2
[737] I adopt the reading stibe for stimmi. cf. Ez. xxiii. 40 (Sept.). estibizon tous ophthalmous sou
[738] cf. Greg. Naz. Orat. xxv. 12. p. 464 Ed. Migne.
[739] cf. Soc. 21.
[740] Observe the pun.
[741] On the subject of episcopal election, vide Dict. Christ. Biog. iv. 335.
[742] o ton kometatesion de largitionon komes. Valesius says, "thesauri principis, qui vulgo sacræ largitiones dicebantur, alii erant per singulas dioeceses quibus proeerant comites. Alii erant in comitatu una cum principe, qui comitatenses largitiones dicebantur. His præerat comes largitionum comitatensium."
[743] Beyrout, between the ancient Byblus and Sidon. Near here St. George killed the dragon, according to the legend. Our patron saint's dragon does not seem to have been, as may possibly have been the case in some similar stories, a surviving Saurian, but simply a materialization of some picture of George vanquishing the old dragon, the Devil.
[744] Ps. xiv. 1. The Sept. reads Eipen aphron en kardia autou ouk esti Theos, which admits of the translation "He is not God."
[745] 1 Cor. iv. 9
[746] In Coele-Syria, near the sources of the Orontes, where the ruins of the temple of the sun built by Antoninus Pius are known by the modern equivalent of the older title--Baal-Bek, "the city of the sun."
[747] Jer. ii. 12. A.V. "Be astonished, O ye heavens." But in Sept. as in text exeste ho ouranos epi touto
[748] Isaiah i. 2
[749] Here the obvious sense of deisidaimonon matches the "superstitious" of A.V. in Acts xvii. 22
[750] Valesius identifies Phennesus with Phynon in Arabia Petræa, now Tafileh.
[751] The island of Marmara in the sea of that name.
[752] The Roman "Flagellum" was a frightful instrument of torture, and is distinguished from the "scutica," or whip, and "virga," or rod. It was knotted with bones and bits of metal, and sometimes ended in a hook. Horace (Sat. I. iii. 119) calls it "horribile."
[753] cf. Soph. Ant. 30, Where the corpse of Polyneikes is described as left ----"unwept unsepulchred A prize full rich for birds." (Plumptre.) Christian sentiment is still affected by the horror felt by the Greeks at deprivation of the rites of burial which finds striking expression in the dispute between Teucer and Menelaos about the burial of Ajax.
[754] Ex. xii. 30
[755] 1 Peter v. 8
[756] Now Sefurieh, anciently Sepphoris; an unimportant place till erected by Herod Antipas into the capital of Galilee.
[757] Proverbs xxvii. 20
[758] Now Niksar, on the river Lykus, the scene of two councils; (i.) a.d. 315, when the first canon ordered every priest to forfeit his orders on marriage (Mansi ii. 539) (ii.) a.d. 350, when Eustathius of Sebaste was condemned (Mansi, iii. 291).