ra. Basil did not
cease to praise and glorify God in his dungeon, and Pegasus repaired
thither to him in hopes, by promises and entreaties, to work him into
compliance: but came back to the proconsul highly offended at the
liberty with which the martyr had reproached him with his apostacy. At
the request of the commissaries, the proconsul ordered him to be again
brought before them, and tormented on the rack with greater cruelty than
before; and afterwards to be loaded with the heaviest irons, and lodged
in the deepest dungeon.

In the mean time Julian set out from Constantinople for Antioch, in
order to prepare for his Persian expedition. From Chalcedon he turned
out of his road to Pessinunte, a town in Galatia, there to offer
sacrifice in a famous temple of Cibele. In that town he condemned a
certain Christian to be beheaded for the faith, and the martyr went to
execution with as much joy as if he had been called to a banquet. When
Julian arrived at Ancyra, St. Basil was presented before him, and the
crafty emperor, putting on an air of compassion, said to him: "I myself
am well skilled in your mysteries; and I can inform you, that Christ, in
whom you place your trust, died under Pilate, and remains among the
dead." The martyr answered: "You are deceived; you have renounced Christ
at a time when he conferred on you the empire. But he will deprive you
of it, together with your life. As you have thrown down his altars, so
will he overturn your throne: and as you have violated his holy law,
which you had so often announced to the people, (when a reader in the
church,) and have trodden it under your feet, your body shall be cast
forth without the honor of a burial, and shall be trampled upon by men."
Julian replied: "I designed to dismiss thee: but thy impudent manner of
rejecting my advice, and uttering reproaches against me, force me to use
thee ill. It is therefore my command, that every day thy skin be torn
off thee in seven different places, till thou hast no more left." He
then gave it in charge to count Frumentinus, the captain of his guards,
to see this barbarous sentence executed. The saint, after having
suffered with wonderful patience the first incisions, desired to speak
to the emperor. {643} Frumentinus would be himself the bearer of this
message to Julian, not doubting but Basil intended to comply and offer
sacrifice. Julian instantly ordered that the confessor should meet him
in the temple of Esculapius. He