Section 381
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350 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. hands were dislocated. Nevertheless they bore the event, as regulated by the secret determinations of God. One was seized by the hands, and led to the altar by others who wore thrustin^the polluted and unhallowed victim into his right hand, and then suf fered to go again as if he had sacrificed. Another, though he had not even touched, when others said that he had sacrificed, went away in silence. Another was taken up half dead, and cast out as already dead, and was released from his bonds, and ranked among the sacrificers. Another crying out, and asserting that he did not assent to these things, was struck on the mouth ; and thus silenced by the many blows of those that were suborned for this purpose, was thrust away by violence, although he had never sacrificed. So much was it valued by them, for one upon the whole only to appear to have performed their desire. Of these therefore, so many in number, only Alpheus* and Zaccheus were honoured with the crown of the holy martyrs, who after scourg ing and scraping with iron hooks, and severe bonds, arid the tor tures consequent on these, and other different tortures on the rack, having their feet stretched a night and day, to the fourth hole of the stocks, were at length beheaded on the seventeenth day of the month Dius, the same that is called the fifteenth of the Calends of December. Thus for confessing the only God and Jesus Christ the only king, they suffered martyrdom with the former martyr, just as if they had uttered some dreadful blasphemy. CHAPTER II. The martyr Romanus. WORTHY of record, also, are the circumstances respecting Ro manus, which occurred on the same day at Antioch. He was a * The names of some of these martyrs are to he found in some of the old calen dars. Thus Alpheus is found on the 17th of November, corresponding to the date here given. Others may be found in the same way. The names of some have in the lapse of time given way to others.