r
epidemic occurred, the well-known cry was heard, "To the lions with
the Christians!" The people forced the magistrates to hunt and
persecute the Christians.

=The Martyrs.=--For the two centuries and a half that the Christians
were persecuted, throughout the empire there were thousands of
victims, of every age, sex, and condition. Roman citizens, like St.
Paul, were beheaded; the others were crucified, burned, most often
sent to the beasts in the amphitheatre. If they were allowed to escape
with their lives, they were set at forced labor in the mines.
Sometimes torture was aggravated by every sort of invention. In the
great execution at Lyons, in 177, the Christians, after being tortured
and confined in narrow prison quarters, were brought to the arena. The
beasts mutilated without killing them. They were then seated in iron
chairs heated red by fire. Blandina, a young slave, who survived all
these torments was bound with cords and exposed to the fury of a bull.
The Christians joyfully suffered these persecutions which gave them
entrance to heaven. The occasion presented an opportunity for
rendering public testimony to Christ. And so they did not call
themselves victims, but martyrs (witnesses); their torture was a
testimony. They compared it to the combat of the Olympian games; like
the victor in the athletic contests, they spoke of the palm or the
crown. Even now the festal day of a martyr is the day of his death.

Frequently a Christian who was present at the persecution would draft
a written account of the martyrdom--he related the arrest, the
examination, the tortures, and the death. These brief accounts, filled
with edifying details, were called The Acts of the Martyrs. They were
circulated in the remotest communities; from one end of the empire to
the other they published the glory of the martyrs and excited a desire
to imitate them. Thousands of the faithful, seized by a thirst for
martyrdom, pressed forward to incriminate themselves and to demand
condemnation. One day a governor of Asia had decreed persecutions
against some Christians: all the Christians of the city presented
themselves in his tribunal and demanded to be persecuted. The
governor, exasperated, had some of them executed and sent away the
others. "Begone, you wretches! If you are so bent on death, you have
precipices and ropes." Some of the faithful, to be surer of torture,
entered the temples and threw down the idols of the gods. It was
seve