Section 395
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364 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. sent, supplicating the supreme God, not to impute to them their sin against him. Praying thus, with a loud voice, and moving almost all to com passion and tears, as one unjustly slain, yet composing himself, and submitting his bare neck to the stroke of the sword, he was crowned with a divine martyrdom on the twenty-fifth of the month Panemus, which would be the eighth of the calends of August. And such was the end of these. But after the lapse of no long time, one hundred and thirty other noble wrestlers of the Christian faith, undergoing the same mutilations of eyes and feet with the former in Egypt ; some by the order of Maximinus were condemned and sent away to the mines in Palestine, others to those in Cilicia. CHAPTER IX. The renewal of the persecution with greater violence. Antoninus, Zebina, Germanus, and others. AFTER the flame of persecution had relaxed its violence amid such heroic achievements of the noble martyrs of Christ, and had been almost extinguished with the blood of holy men, and now some relief and liberty had been granted to Ihose con demned to labour in the mines for Christ's sake, and we began to breathe an air somewhat purer, I know not how, he that had received the power to persecute, was again roused by a new im pulse against the Christians. Immediately, therefore, edicts were issued against us from Maximinus, every where in the provinces. Governors and the Prastorian Praefect, in proclamations and edicts, and public ordinances, urged the magistrates and generals, and notaries in every city, to execute the imperial mandate, which ordained, that with all speed the decayed temples of the idols should be rebuilt, and that all people, men, women, domestics, and even infants at the breast, should sacrifice and make liba tions, and that they should be diligently made to taste of the ex