Section 358
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 327 he did not even injure them in the least, they let loose other beasts upon them. At length, however, after these various and terrible assaults, all of them were despatched with the sword, and instead of an interment and sepulchre, they were committed to the waves of the sea. CHAPTER VIII. Those who suffered in Egypt. AND such, too, was the severity of the struggle which was en dured by the Egyptians, who wrestled gloriously for the faith at Tyre. But one cannot but admire those that suffered also in their native land, where thousands, both men, and women, and children, despising the present life for the sake of our Saviour's doctrine, submitted to death in various shapes. Some, after being tortured with scrapings and the rack, and the most dreadful scourgings, and other innumerable agonies, which one might shudder to hear, were finally committed to the flames ; some plunged and drown ed in the sea, others voluntarily offering their own heads to the executioners, others dying in the midst of their torments, some wasted away by famine, and others again fixed to the cross. Some, indeed, were executed as malefactors usually were ; others more cruelly, were nailed with the head downwards, and kept alive until they were destroyed by starving on the cross itself. CHAPTER IX. Of those in Thebais. BUT it would exceed all power of detail to give an idea of the sufferings and tortures which the martyrs of Thebais endured. These, instead of hooks, had their bodies scraped with shells, and were mangled in this way until they died. Women tied by one 30*