3.
But they also seized that most admirable virgin Apollonia, then in advanced life, and knocked out all her teeth, 1 and cut her jaws; and then kindling a fire before the city, they threatened to burn her alive unless she would repeat along with them their expressions of impiety. 2 And although she seemed to deprecate 3 her fate for a little, on being let go, she leaped eagerly into the fire and was consumed. They also laid hold of a certain Serapion in his own house; 4 and after torturing him with severe cruelties, and breaking all his limbs, they dashed him headlong from an upper storey to the ground. And there was no road, no thoroughfare, no lane even, where we could walk, whether by night or by day; for at all times and in every place they all kept crying out, that if any one should refuse to repeat their blasphemous expressions, he must be at once dragged off and burnt. These inflictions were carried rigorously on for a considerable time 5 in this manner. But when the insurrection and the civil war in due time overtook these wretched people, 6 that diverted their savage cruelty from us, and turned it against themselves. And we enjoyed a little breathing time, as long as leisure failed them for exercising their fury against us. 7
-
[To this day St. Apollonia is invoked all over Europe; and votive offerings are to be seen hung up at her shrines, in the form of teeth, by those afflicted with toothache.] ↩
-
ta tes asebeias kerugmata. What these precisely were, it is not easy to say. Dionysius speaks of them also as dusphema rhemata in this epistle, and as atheoi phonai in that to Germanus. Gallandi thinks the reference is to the practice, of which we read also in the Acts of Polycarp, ch. 9, where the proconsul addresses the martyr with the order: loidoreson ton Christon--Revile Christ. And that the test usually put to reputed Christians by the early persecutors was this cursing of Christ, we learn from Pliny, book x. epist. 97. [Vol. i. p. 41.] ↩
-
Or, shrink from. ↩
-
ephestion, for which Nicephorus reads badly, 'Ephesion. ↩
-
epipolu. ↩
-
athlious. But Pearson suggests athlous, ="when insurrection and civil war took the place of these persecutions." This would agree better with the common usage of diadechomai. ↩
-
ascholian tou pros emas thumou labonton. The Latin version gives "dum illorum cessaret furor." W. Lowth renders, "dum non vacaret ipsis furorem suum in nos exercere." ↩
