she enjoy who did not feel such pain. By what love,
by what vision, by what potion was she so transported out of herself,
and as it were divinely inebriated, to seem without feeling in a mortal
body?" She called for her brother, and said to him and Rusticus,
"Continue firm in the faith, love one another, and be not scandalized at
our sufferings." All the martyrs were now brought to the place of their
butchery. But the people, not yet satisfied with beholding blood, cried
out to have them brought into the middle of the amphitheatre, that they
might have the pleasure of seeing them receive the last blow. Upon this,
some of the martyrs rose up, and having given one another the kiss of
peace, went of their own accord into the middle of the arena; others
were dispatched without speaking, or stirring out of the place they were
in. St. Perpetua fell into the hands of a very timorous and unskilful
apprentice of the gladiators, who, with a trembling hand, gave her many
slight wounds, which made her languish a long time. Thus, says St.
Austin, did two women, amidst fierce beasts and the swords of
gladiators, vanquish the devil and all his fury. The day of their
martyrdom was the 7th of March, as it is marked in the most ancient
martyrologies, and in the Roman calendar as old as the year 354,
published by Bucherins. St. Prosper says they suffered at Carthage,
which agrees with all the circumstances. Their bodies were in the great
church of Carthage, in the fifth age, as St. Victor[6] informs us. Saint
Austin says, their festival drew yearly more to honor their memory in
their church, than curiosity had done to their martyrdom. They are
mentioned in the canon of the Mass.

Footnotes:
1. The prisons of the ancient Romans, still to be seen in many old
amphitheatres, &c., are dismal holes: having at most one very small
aperture for light, just enough to show day.
2. These stocks, called Nervus, were a wooden machine with many holes,
in which the prisoners' feet were fastened and stretched to great
distances, as to the fourth or fifth holes, for the increase of
their torment. St. Perpatua remarks, they were chained, and also set
in this engine during their stay in the camp prison, which seems to
have been several days, in expectation of the day of the public
show.
3. By the conclusions which St. Perpetua was led to make from her two
visions, it evidently appears, that the church, in that early ag