ssinians, must be reckoned from the 29th of August, A.
D. 284; as the beginning of the Egyptian year was nineteen days earlier
than the real accession of Diocletian. See Dissertation Preliminaire a
l'Art de verifier les Dates. * Note: On the aera of martyrs see the
very curious dissertations of Mons Letronne on some recently discovered
inscriptions in Egypt and Nubis, p. 102, &c.--M.]

[Footnote 132: The expression of Lactantius, (de M. P. c. 15,)
"sacrificio pollui coegit," implies their antecedent conversion to the
faith, but does not seem to justify the assertion of Mosheim, (p. 912,)
that they had been privately baptized.]

[Footnote 133: M. de Tillemont (Memoires Ecclesiastiques, tom. v. part
i. p. 11, 12) has quoted from the Spicilegium of Dom Luc d'Archeri a
very curious instruction which Bishop Theonas composed for the use of
Lucian.]

[Footnote 134: Lactantius, de M. P. c. 10.]

[Footnote 135: Eusebius, Hist. Ecclesiast. l. viii. c. 1. The reader
who consults the original will not accuse me of heightening the picture.
Eusebius was about sixteen years of age at the accession of the emperor
Diocletian.]

Notwithstanding this seeming security, an attentive observer might
discern some symptoms that threatened the church with a more violent
persecution than any which she had yet endured. The zeal and rapid
progress of the Christians awakened the Polytheists from their supine
indifference in the cause of those deities, whom custom and education
had taught them to revere. The mutual provocations of a religious war,
which had already continued above two hundred years, exasperated the
animosity of the contending parties. The Pagans were incensed at the
rashness of a recent and obscure sect, which presumed to accuse their
countrymen of error, and to devote their ancestors to eternal misery.
The habits of justifying the popular mythology against the invectives
of an implacable enemy, produced in their minds some sentiments of faith
and reverence for a system which they had been accustomed to consider
with the most careless levity. The supernatural powers assumed by the
church inspired at the same time terror and emulation. The followers
of the established religion intrenched themselves behind a similar
fortification of prodigies; invented new modes of sacrifice, of
expiation, and of initiation; [136] attempted to revive the credit of
their expiring oracles; [137] and listened with eager credulity to every
impostor,