accomplishment of our Saviour's prediction. Then they
began to dig the new foundation, in which work many thousands were
employed. But what they had thrown up in the day was, by repeated
earthquakes, the night following cast back again into the trench. "And
when Alypius the next day earnestly pressed on the work, with the
assistance of the governor of the province, there issued," says
Ammianus, "such horrible balls of fire out of the earth near the
foundations,[27] which rendered the place, from time to time,
inaccessible to the scorched and blasted workmen. And the victorious
element continuing in this manner obstinately and resolutely bent as it
were to drive them to a distance, Alypius thought proper to give over
the enterprise."[28] {612} This is also recorded by the Christian
authors, who, besides the earthquake and fiery eruption, mention storms,
tempests, and whirlwinds, lightning, crosses impressed on the bodies and
garments of the assistants, and a flaming cross in the heavens,
surrounded with a luminous circle. The order whereof seems to have been
as follows. This judgment of the Almighty was ushered in by storms and
whirlwinds, by which prodigious heaps of lime and sand and other loose
materials were carried away.[29] After these followed lightning, the
usual consequence of collision of clouds in tempests. Its effects were,
first the destroying the more solid materials, and melting down the iron
instruments;[30] and secondly, the impressing shining crosses on the
bodies and garments of the assistants without distinction, in which
there was something that in art and elegance exceeded all painting or
embroidery; which when the infidels perceived, they endeavored, but in
vain, to wash them out.[31] In the third place came the earthquake which
cast out the stones of the old foundations, and shook the earth into the
trench or cavity dug for the new; besides overthrowing the adjoining
buildings and porticoes wherein were lodged great numbers of Jews
designed for the work, who were all either crushed to death, or at least
maimed or wounded. The number of the killed or hurt was increased by the
fiery eruption in the fourth place, attended both with storms and
tempests above, and with an earthquake below.[32] From this eruption,
many fled to a neighboring church for shelter, but could not obtain
entrance; whether on account of its being closed by a secret invisible
hand, as the fathers state the case, or at least by a s