Section 403
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372 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. and inhaled the flame in his mouth, and then most nobly perse vering in silence, until his last breath, he uttered not another word after that which he uttered as soon as the flame reached him, calling upon Christ the Son of God, his helper. Such a wrestler then was Porphyry. But Seleucus, one of the confessors of the army, brought the intelligence of his martyrdom to Pamphilus ; and he, as the bearer of such intelligence, was imme diately honoured with the same lot. For as soon as he had an nounced the end of Porphyry, and had saluted one of the mar tyrs with a kiss, some of the soldiers seized him and led him to the governor, who, as if to urge him to attach himself to the former, as his companion on the way to heaven, commands him imme diately to be put to death. He was from Cappadocia, but among the chosen band of Roman soldiers, and one who had obtained nc small share of honours. In the vigour of age, strength, size, and firmness of body, he was greatly superior to his fellow-soldiers, so that he was noted among all for his very appearance, and admired for the grandeur and the comeliness of his whole form. At the very beginning of the persecution, indeed, he was prominent in the trials of the confessors, by his patient endurance of the scourge, and after his renunciation of military life, he exhibited himself a zealous fol lower of those who led a life devoted to the exercises of piety, in which, like a provident father, he proved himself a kind of overseer (ertLGxoTtog,) and protector of destitute orphans and helpless widows, and of all those that were prostrated in poverty and sickness. Hence, also, he was honoured by that God who is better pleased with such charities than the fume and blood of sacrifices, to receive an extraordinary call to martyrdom. He was the tenth after those wrestlers mentioned that were perfect ed in one and the same day, on which, as is probable, the mighty portals of eternal life were opened to Pamphilus, in a manner worthy of the man, and presented to him and to others a ready entrance into the kingdom of heaven. Immediately after Seleu cus, came the aged Theodulus, a grave and pious man, who was of the governor's family, and who on account of his age had been treated with more regard by FiFmilianus than any of his