nd, as far as they could show at their tender ages, which lay between
thirteen and seven, the three girls and the two boys were advancing in the
love of truth and sanctity. Her husband, some years back, when presiding
in the Forum, had punished with just severity an act of ungrateful fraud;
and the perpetrator had always cherished a malignant hatred of him and
his. The moment of gratifying it had now arrived, and he pointed out to
the infuriated rabble the secluded mansion where the Christian household
dwelt. He could not offer to them a more acceptable service, and the
lady's modest apartment was soon swarming with enemies of her God and His
followers. In spite of her heartrending cries and supplications, her
children were seized, and when the youngest boy clung to her, the mother
was thrown senseless upon the pavement. The whole five were carried off in
triumph; it was the greatest success of the day. There was some hesitation
how to dispose of them; at last the girls were handed over to the
priestesses of Astarte, and the boys to the loathsome votaries of Cybele.

Revenge upon Christians was the motive principle of the riot; but the
prospect of plunder stimulated numbers, and here Christians could not
minister to their desires. They began the day by the attack upon the
provision-shop, and now they had reached the aristocratic quarter of the
city, and they gazed with envy and cupidity at the noble mansions which
occupied it. They began to shout out, "Bread, bread!" while they uttered
threats against the Christians; they violently beat at the closed gates,
and looked about for means of scaling the high walls which defended them
in front. The cravings of famished men soon take form and organization;
they began to ask relief from house to house. Nothing came amiss; and
loaves, figs, grapes, wine, found their way into the hands and mouths of
those who were the least exhausted and the least enfeebled. A second line
of fierce supplicants succeeded to the first; and it was plain that,
unless some diversion were effected, the respectable quarter of Sicca had
found a worse enemy than the locust.

The houses of the government _susceptor_, or tax collector, of the
_tabularius_ or registrar, of the _defensor_ or city counsel, and one or
two others, had already been the scene of collisions between the domestic
slaves and the multitude, when a demand was made upon the household of
another of the Curia, who held the office of Flamen