onment as when he was at large.
During his voyage he moves about like the rest of his fellow-travellers;
when he arrives at Rome, he is still treated with great consideration.
He writes letters freely, receives visits from his friends, communicates
with churches and individuals as he desires, though the chain is on his
wrist and the soldier at his side all the while. Even at a much later
date, when the growth of the Christian Church may have created an alarm
among statesmen and magistrates which certainly cannot have existed in
the age of Ignatius, we see the same leniency of treatment, and (what is
more important) the same opportunities of disseminating their opinions
accorded to the prisoners. Thus Saturus and Perpetua, the African
martyrs, who suffered under Severus [76:1] (apparently in the year 202
or 203), are allowed writing materials, with which they record the
extant history of their sufferings; and they too are visited in prison
by Christian deacons, as well as by their own friends. They owed this
liberty partly to the humanity of the chief officers; partly to
gratuities bestowed by their friends on the gaolers [76:2]. Even after
the lapse of another half-century, when Decius seriously contemplated
the extermination of Christianity, we are surprised to find the amount
of communication still kept up with the prisoners in their dungeons. The
Cyprianic correspondence reveals to us the confessors and martyrs
writing letters to their friends, visited by large numbers of people,
even receiving the rites of the Church in their prisons at the hands of
Christian priests.

But the most powerful testimony is derived from the representations of a
heathen writer. The Christian career of Peregrinus must have fallen
within the reign of Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-161). Thus it is not very
far removed, in point of time, from the age of Ignatius. This Peregrinus
is represented by Lucian, writing immediately after his death (A.D.
165), as being incarcerated for his profession of Christianity, and the
satirist thus describes the prison scene [76:3]:--

'When he was imprisoned, the Christians, regarding it as a great
calamity, left no stone unturned in the attempt to rescue him.
Then, when they found this impossible, they looked after his wants
in every other respect with unremitting zeal ([Greek: ou parergos
alla sun spoude]). And from early dawn old women, widows, and
orphan children, might be seen w