punishment is slow in overtaking crime; but the present instance was
an exception to the rule. While the exiled Bishop of Carthage escaped, the
crowd, on the other hand, were caught in the trap which had been laid for
them. We have already said it was a _ruse_ on the part of the governing
authorities of the place to get the rioters out of the city, that they
might at once be relieved of them, and then deal with them just as they
might think fit. When the mob was once outside the walls, they might be
refused re-admittance, and put down with a strong hand. The Roman
garrison, who, powerless to quell the tumult in the narrow and winding
streets and multiplied alleys of the city, had been the authors of the
manoeuvre, now took on themselves the stern completion of it, and
determined to do so in the sternest way. Not a single head of all those
who poured out in the afternoon should return at night. It was not to be
supposed that the soldiers had any tenderness for the Christians, but they
abominated and despised the rabble of the town. They were indignant at
their rising, thought it a personal insult to themselves, and resolved
they should never do so again. The gates were commonly in the custody of
the city guard, but the Porta Septimiana, by which the mob passed out, was
on this occasion claimed by the Romans. It was most suitably circumstanced
for the use they intended to make of it. Immediately outside of it was a
large court of the same level as the ground inside, bordered on the right
and left by substantial walls, which after a time were drawn to meet each
other, and contracted the space to the usual breadth of a road. The walls
continued to run along this road for some distance, till they joined the
way which led to the Campus Martius, and from this point the ground was
open till it reached the head of the ravine. The soldiers drew up at the
gate, and as the worn-out and disappointed, brutalized and half-idiotic
multitudes returned towards it from the country, those who were behind
pushed on between the border walls those who were in front, and, while
they jammed together their ranks, also made escape impossible. It was now
that the Roman soldiers began their barbarous, not to say cowardly,
assault upon them. With heavy maces, with the pike, with iron gauntlets,
with stones and bricks, with clubs, with scourge, with the sword, with the
helmet, with whatever came to hand, they commenced the massacre of that
large concour