Section 397
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366 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. her clothes, so as to leave only her body covered from her loins to her feet, but the rest bare, led her about the whole city of Cesarea, considering it a great feat that he caused her to be driven about the markets and beaten with thongs of hide. And after all these cruelties, which she bore with the greatest firm ness, she exhibited the same most cheerful alacrity, before the tribunal of the judge himself, when she was there condemned to the flames. Whilst aiming his cruelty and madness against the worshippers of the true God, he also went beyond all the. dic tates of nature, not even ashamed to deny the lifeless bodies of these holy men a burial. Night and day he ordered the dead bodies to be carefully watched, as they lay exposed in the open air, the food of beasts, and there was no small number of men present several days, of such as attended to this savage and bar barous decree, and some, indeed, were looking out from their posts of observation, as if it were something worthy of their zeal to see that the dead bodies should not be stolen. But wild beasts, and dogs, and carniverous birds of prey, scattered the human limbs here and there in all directions, and the whole city around was spread with the entrails and bones of men, so that nothing ever appeared more dreadful or horrific, even to those who be fore had been most hostile to us ; they did not indeed so much lament the calamity of those against whom these things were done, as the nuisance against themselves, and the abuse heaped upon our common nature. For at the very gates of the city there was an exhibition pre sented dreadful beyond all description and tragic recital, human flesh devoured not in one plao|F only but scattered over every place ; for it was said that limbs and masses of flesh, and parts of entrails, were to be seen even within the gates. Which things continuing to occur for many days, a strange event, like the fol lowing, took place. The air happened to be clear and bright, and the aspect of the whole heavens was most serene. Then, suddenly, from the greater part of the columns that supported the public porticos, issued drops like tears, and the market places and streets, though there was no moisture from the air, I know not whence it came, were sprinkled with water, and became