considerable family and
the most shining virtues, was a devout christian. She had seven sons,
whom she had educated with the most exemplary piety.

Januarius, the eldest, was scourged, and pressed to death with weights;
Felix and Philip, the two next had their brains dashed out with clubs;
Silvanus, the fourth, was murdered by being thrown from a precipice; and
the three younger sons, Alexander, Vitalis, and Martial, were beheaded.
The mother was beheaded with the same sword as the three latter.

Justin, the celebrated philosopher, fell a martyr in this persecution.
He was a native of Neapolis, in Samaria, and was born A. D. 103. Justin
was a great lover of truth, and a universal scholar; he investigated the
Stoic and Peripatetic philosophy, and attempted the Pythagorean; but the
behaviour of one of its professors disgusting him, he applied himself to
the Platonic, in which he took great delight. About the year 133, when
he was thirty years of age, he became a convert to christianity, and
then, for the first time, perceived the real nature of truth.

He wrote an elegant epistle to the Gentiles, and employed his talents in
convincing the Jews of the truth of the christian rites; spending a
great deal of time in travelling, till he took up his abode in Rome, and
fixed his habitation upon the Viminal mount.

He kept a public school, taught many who afterward became great men, and
wrote a treatise to confute heresies of all kinds. As the pagans began
to treat the christians with great severity, Justin wrote his first
apology in their favour. This piece displays great learning and genius,
and occasioned the emperor to publish an edict in favor of the
christians.

Soon after, he entered into frequent contests with Crescens, a person of
a vicious life and conversation, but a celebrated cynic philosopher; and
his arguments appeared so powerful, yet disgusting to the cynic, that he
resolved on, and in the sequel accomplished, his destruction.

The second apology of Justin, upon certain severities, gave Crescens the
cynic an opportunity of prejudicing the emperor against the writer of
it; upon which Justin, and six of his companions, were apprehended.
Being commanded to sacrifice to the pagan idols, they refused, and were
condemned to be scourged, and then beheaded; which sentence was executed
with all imaginable severity.

Several were beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to the image of Jupiter;
in particular Concordus, a