Section 396
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 365 ecrable sacrifices, that the things for sale in the markets should be defiled with the libations of victims, and that before the baths, guards should be stationed, who should pollute those that had been cleansed in these, with their execrable sacrifices. These things being thus performed, and our brethren, as was natural, being from the beginning most concerned, and the heathen them selves censuring the severity and absurdity of the measure, as superfluous at best, for these measures appeared overbearing and oppressive even to them, and as there was a mighty storm gathering every where upon them, again the divine power of our Saviour infused such courage and confidence into his wrestlers, that without being drawn or even impelled by any one, they voluntarily trampled upon the threats of such opponents. Three, therefore, of the believers joining together, rushed upon the go vernor, offering sacrifice, and called upon him to desist from his error, for there was no other God but the Supreme Creator and maker of the universe. Then being asked who they were, they boldly confessed they were Christians. On this, Firmilianus, in a rage, and without inflicting tortures, condemns them to capital punishment. Of these, one named Antoninus was a presbyter, another named Zebina was a native of Eleutheropolis, the third was named Germanus. They were executed on the thirteenth of the month Dius, on the ides of November. On the same day Ennathas, a woman of Scythopolis, ennobled also by the virgin's fillet, was added as an associate to them. She had not, indeed, done what the former had, but was dragged by force, and brought before the judge, and after being scourged, and en during dreadful abuses which were heaped upon her by Maxys, the tribune of the neighbouring district, and that without au thority from a higher power, a man who was by no means as good as his name,* a sanguinary character in other respects, ex ceedingly harsh and inflexible, and in his whole manner so really fierce and violent that he was in bad repute with all that knew him. This man, then, having stripped the blessed virgin of all * Perhaps our author alludes to some such signification as the Hebrew nonD refuge, of which Maxys appears to be a derivative.