the letter of St. Dionysius, then bishop of Alexandria,
preserved by Eusebius, l. 6, c. 41, 42, p. 236. Ed. Val.

A.D. 249.

ST. DIONYSIUS of Alexandria wrote to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, a
relation of the persecution raised at Alexandria by the heathen populace
of that city, in the last year of the reign of the emperor Philip. A
certain poet of Alexandria, who pretended to foretell things to come,
stirred up this great city against the Christians on the motive of
religion. The first victim of their rage was a venerable old man, named
Metras, or Metrius, whom they would have compelled to utter impious
words against the worship of {387} the true God: which, when he refused
to do, they beat him with staffs, thrust splinters of reeds into his
eyes, and having dragged him into one of the suburbs, stoned him to
death. The next person they seized was a Christian woman, called Quinta,
whom they carried to one of their temples to pay divine worship to the
idol. She loaded the execrable divinity with many reproaches, which so
exasperated the people that they dragged her by the heels upon the
pavement of sharp pebbles, cruelly scourged her, and put her to the same
death. The rioters, by this time, were in the height of their fury.
Alexandria seemed like a city taken by storm. The Christians mads no
opposition, but betook themselves to flight, and beheld the loss of
their goods with joy; for their hearts had no ties on earth. Their
constancy was equal to their disinterestedness; for of all who fell into
their hands, St. Dionysius knew of none that renounced Christ.

The admirable Apollonia, whom old age and the state of virginity
rendered equally venerable, was seized by them. Their repeated blows on
her jaws beat out all her teeth. At last they made a great fire without
the city, and threatened to cast her into it, if she did not utter
certain impious words. She begged a moment's delay, as if it had been to
deliberate on the proposal; but, to convince her persecutors that her
sacrifice was perfectly voluntary, she no sooner found herself at
liberty, than of her own accord she leaped into the flames. They next
exercised their fury on a holy man called Serapion, and tortured him in
his own house with great cruelty. After bruising his limbs, disjointing
and breaking his bones, they threw him headlong from the top of the
house on the pavement, and so completed his martyrdom. A civil war among
the pagan citizens put an end to thei