er protection, had suffered such a physical shock as
to be incapable of exercising any authority or influence she might
possess. And the Empress Prisca, less courageous in spirit, less
beautiful in person, and less potent in influence, was completely cowed
by the domineering violence of the Emperor Diocletian, who was quite
beside himself at the conspiracy against the gods, and against the
Imperial Household which he persuaded himself had been discovered.

"Madam," he replied, in answer to a weak remonstrance against the
persecution, "was it not enough that our palace at Nicomedia was burned
over our heads, that you must apologise for treason in our very
household and the menace of our very person. No; the Christian
superstition must be stamped out, and the worship of the gods
maintained."[37]

Hence throughout the wide empire, in the sober language of history,
"Edict followed edict, rising in regular gradations of angry barbarity.
The whole clergy were declared enemies of the State; and bishops,
presbyters, and deacons were crowded into the prisons intended for the
basest malefactors"[38]--"an innumerable company," says the Christian
bishop Eusebius, "so that there was no room left for those condemned for
crime." "We saw with our own eyes," writes a contemporary historian,
"our houses of worship thrown down, the sacred Scriptures committed to
the flames, and the shepherds of the people become the sport of their
enemies--scourge with rods, tormented with the rack and excruciating
scrapings, in which some endured the most terrible death. Then men and
women, with a certain divine and inexpressible alacrity rushed into the
fire. The persecutors, constantly inventing new tortures, vied with one
another as if there were prizes offered to him who should invent the
greatest cruelties. The men bore fire, sword, and crucifixions, savage
beasts, and the depths of the sea, the maiming of limbs and searing with
red hot iron, digging out of the eyes and mutilations of the whole body,
also hunger, the mines, and prison. The women also were strengthened by
the Divine Word, so that some of them endured the same trials as the
men, and bore away the same prize. It would exceed all powers of
detail," he goes on, "to give an idea of the sufferings and tortures
which the martyrs endured. And these things were done, not for a few
days, but for a series of whole years. We ourselves," he adds, "have
seen crowds of persons, some beheaded, some