clesi[ae]_.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[37] These are the very words of the edict quoted in note to Chapter II.

[38] Milman, History of Christianity, Book II., Chapter ix.

[39] Eusebius' "Ecclesiastical History," Book viii., Chaps, ii-xiv.

[40] Hist. Eccles., v. I.

[41] Multique avidius tum martyria gloriosis mortibus qu[ae]rebantur quam
nunc episcopatus pravis ambitionibus appetuntur.--Sulpic. Sever. Hist.,
lib. II.

[42] Apol. c. 30.

[43] Gregory Nazianzen. Orat. de Laud. Basil. See also the striking
language of Ignatius. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. III. 36.

[44] Chrys. Horn. 74, de Martyr.

[45] Kip, p. 88--from Maitland, p. 146. Sometimes the ardour for
martyrdom rose into a passion. Eusebius says (Hist. Eccles., viii., 6)
that in Nicomedia "Men and women with a certain divine and inexpressible
alacrity rushed into the fire."

Inscripta CHRISTO pagina immortalis est,
Excepit adstans angelus coram Deo.
Et qu[ae] locutus martyr, et qu[ae] pertulit:
Nec verbum solum disserentis condidit,
Omnis notata est sanguinis dimensio,
Qu[ae] vis doloris, quive segmenti modus:
Guttam cruoris ille nullam perdidit. _Peristeph._

[46] Video, proboque meliora,
Deterioraque sequor.--_Hor._

[47] The pagans called the martyrs [Greek: biatha(uatoi], or self
murderers.

[48] Tertul., Apol., c. 50.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE MAMERTINE PRISON.

Let us now turn our attention to the fate of the characters in our tale
of Christian trial and triumph, around whom its interest chiefly
centres. They have been consigned to one of the most dismal of the many
gloomy dungeons of Rome--the thrice terrible Mamertine prison--haunted
with memories of long centuries of cruelty and crime. Manacled each to a
Roman soldier, Adauctus, Aurelius, Demetrius, and Callirho[e:], together
with other Christians condemned to martyrdom, marched through the
streets under the noontide glare of a torrid sun. A guard armed _cap [a\]
pi[e/]_, flung open an iron-studded door, and admitted them to a gloomy
vault a few steps below the level of the street. Here a brawny Vulcan,
with anvil and hammer, with many a brutal gibe smote off the fetters
that linked the prisoners and soldiers together, and riveted them again
so that these victims of oppression were bound together in pairs.
Sometimes it happened that one of a pair thus bound together died, and
the survivor endured the horror of being inseparably fettered to a