.

Licinius, being in his tent,[354] thinking of the battle he was to
fight on the morrow, saw an angel, who dictated to him a form of
prayer which he made his soldiers learn by heart, and by means of
which he gained the victory over the Emperor Maximian.

Mascezel, general of the Roman troops which Stilicho sent into Africa
against Gildas, prepared himself for this war, in imitation of
Theodosius the Great, by prayer and the intervention of the servants
of God. He took with him in his vessel some monks, whose only
occupation during the voyage was to pray, fast, and sing psalms.
Gildas had an army of seventy thousand men; Mascezel had but five
thousand, and did not think he could without rashness attempt to
compete with an enemy so powerful and so far superior in the number of
his forces. As he was pondering uneasily on these things, St. Ambrose,
who died the year before, appeared to him by night, holding a staff in
his hand, and struck the ground three times, crying, "Here, here,
here!" Mascezel understood that the saint promised him the victory in
that same spot three days after. In fact, the third day he marched
upon the enemy, offering peace to the first whom he met; but an ensign
having replied to him very arrogantly, he gave him a severe blow with
his sword upon his arm, which made his standard swerve; those who were
afar off thought that he was yielding, and that he lowered his
standard in sign of submission, and they hastened to do the same.
Paulinus, who wrote the life of St. Ambrose, assures us that he had
these particulars from the lips of Mascezel himself; and Orosius heard
them from those who had been eye-witnesses of the fact.

The persecutors having inflicted martyrdom on seven Christian
virgins,[355] one of them appeared the following night to St.
Theodosius of Ancyra, and revealed to him the spot where herself and
her companions had been thrown into the lake, each one with a stone
tied around her neck. As Theodosius and his people were occupied in
searching for their bodies, a voice from heaven warned Theodosius to
be on his guard against the traitor, meaning to indicate Polycronius,
who betrayed Theodosius, and was the occasion of his being arrested
and martyred.

St. Potamienna,[356] a Christian virgin who suffered martyrdom at
Alexandria, appeared after her death to several persons, and was the
cause of their conversion to Christianity. She appeared in particular
to a soldier named Basilidus, wh