ded, others burned alive in a single day,
so that the murderous weapons were blunted and broken to pieces, and the
executioners, weary with slaughter, were obliged to give over the work
of blood.... They vied with each other," he continues, "in inventing new
tortures, as if there were prizes offered to him who should contrive the
greatest cruelties."[16] Men whose only crime was their religion, were
scourged with chains laden with bronze balls, till the flesh hung in
shreds, and even the bones were broken. They were bound in fetters of
red hot iron, and roasted over fires so slow that they lingered for
hours, or even days, in their mortal agony; their flesh was scraped from
the very bone with ragged shells, or lacerated with burning pincers,
iron hooks, and instruments with horrid teeth and claws, hence called
_ungul[ae]_, examples of which have been found in the Catacombs; molten
metal was applied to their bodies till they became one undistinguishable
wound, and mingled salt and vinegar,[17] or unslacked lime, were rubbed
upon the quivering flesh, torn and bleeding from the rack or
scourge--tortures more inhuman than savage Indian ever wreaked upon his
mortal foe. Chaste matrons and tender virgins were given over to a fate
a thousand-fold worse than death, and were subjected to indignities too
horrible for words to utter. And all these sufferings were endured,
often with joy and exultation, for the love of a Divine Master, when a
single word, a grain of incense cast upon the heathen altar, would have
released the victims from their agonies. No lapse of time, and no recoil
from the idolatrous homage paid in after ages to the martyr's relics,
should impair in our hearts the profound and rational reverence with
which we bend before his tomb.

While the examination of the Christian martyr was in progress, much
interest was manifested in his fate by the throng of idlers who were
wont to linger around the public courts, to gratify their curiosity or
their morbid love of cruelty.

"The State is in danger," said Piso, the barber, gesticulating
violently, "if such miscreants are suffered to live."

"Ay, is it," chimed in a garrulous pedagogue, "this is rank treason."

"Right, neighbour Probus," added a pettifogging lawyer. "This is the
very _crimen majestatis_. These men are the enemies of C[ae]sar and of the
Roman people."

"Who would think he was so wicked?" said a poor freed-woman who sold
sugar barley in the Forum. "Su