down from the place
where he was standing, and to be beaten with rods. Perhaps the judge did
not mean so much to punish the old man for being noisy as to try whether
the sight of his suffering might not move his daughter; but, although
Perpetua felt every blow as if it had been laid upon herself, she knew
that she must not give way. She was condemned, with her companions, to
be exposed to wild beasts; and, after she had been taken back to prison,
her father visited her once more. He seemed as if beside himself with
grief; he tore his white beard, he cursed his old age, and spoke in a
way that might have moved a heart of stone. But still Perpetua could
only be sorry for him; she could not give up her Saviour.

The prisoners were kept for some time after their condemnation, that
they might be put to death at some great games which were to be held on
the birthday of one of the emperor's sons; and during this confinement
their behaviour had a great effect on many who saw it. The gaoler
himself was converted by it, and so were others who had gone to gaze at
them. At length the appointed day came, and the martyrs were led into
the amphitheatre. The men were torn by leopards and bears; Perpetua and
a young woman named Felicitas, who had been a slave, were put into nets
and thrown before a furious cow, who tossed them and gored them cruelly:
and when this was over, Perpetua seemed as if she had not felt it, but
were awaking from a trance, and she asked when the cow was to come. She
then helped Felicitas to rise from the ground, and spoke words of
comfort and encouragement to others. When the people in the amphitheatre
had seen as much as they wished of the wild beasts, they called out
that the prisoners should be killed. Perpetua and the rest then took
leave of each other, and walked with cheerful looks and firm steps into
the middle of the amphitheatre, where men with swords fell on them and
dispatched them. The executioner who was to kill Perpetua was a youth,
and was so nervous that he stabbed her in a place where the hurt was not
deadly; but she herself took hold of his sword, and showed him where to
give her the death-wound.

CHAPTER VII.

ORIGEN.

A.D. 185-254.

The same persecution in which Perpetua and her companions suffered at
Carthage raged also at Alexandria in Egypt, where a learned man named
Leonides was one of the martyrs (A.D. 202). Leonides had a son named
Origen, whom he had brought up very caref