His son Maxentius, who established the tyranny at Rome, at his outset feigned our faith, to please and flatter the people of the Romans, and on this account ordered his subjects to relax the persecution against the Christians, counterfeiting godliness, so that he might appear gracious and far more gentle than his predecessors.
Yet he did not in deeds prove to be such as it was hoped he would be; but, running aground upon every kind of unholy work, he left undone no deed of foulness and licentiousness, committing adulteries and corruptions of every sort. Indeed, separating from their husbands the lawfully wedded wives, and outraging them, he sent them back again to their husbands most dishonourably; and these things he was at pains to practise not against obscure or undistinguished persons, but, dealing wantonly, he insulted especially the most eminent of those who had attained the foremost rank of the Roman senate.
And all the peoples and rulers subject to him, the illustrious and the obscure alike, were worn down by his terrible tyranny. And not even when they kept quiet and bore the bitter slavery was there any relief from the murderous cruelty of the tyrant; for on some slight pretext he once handed over the populace to slaughter by the bodyguards about him, and countless multitudes of the Roman people were slain in the midst of the city, not by the spears and full armour of Scythians or barbarians, but by those of their very own.
Indeed, as to the slaughter of senators that was carried out through plots against their property, it is not even possible to reckon it up, countless numbers being put to death at different times on different fabricated charges.
And the crowning point of the tyrant's evils drove him on to sorcery: by magical contrivances, at one time ripping open pregnant women, at another searching out the entrails of new-born infants, slaughtering lions, and composing certain unspeakable rites for the invocation of demons and for averting the war; for through these things his whole hope was that the victory would be achieved for him.
This man, then, tyrannizing at Rome, it is impossible to tell what manner of things he did in enslaving his subjects, so that even in respect of the necessary supplies of food they came to stand in extreme scarcity and want, such as those of our day do not remember to have happened at any other time at Rome.
But the tyrant of the East, Maximin, secretly making a compact of friendship, as toward a brother in wickedness, with him at Rome, took pains for a very long time to escape notice; yet, being detected at length, he paid a fitting penalty.
And it was a marvel how this man too carried off the kindred and brotherly traits—nay rather, the foremost prizes and trophies—of the depravity of the tyrant at Rome. For the chief of sorcerers and magicians were deemed worthy of the highest honour with him, since he was constituted exceedingly timorous and most superstitious, and set great store by the error concerning idols and demons. At any rate, without divinations and oracles he was not able to venture to stir up anything, even, so to speak, to a finger's breadth.
On this account he applied himself to the persecution against us more vehemently and more persistently than those before him, commanding temples to be raised up in every city, and the sacred precincts that had been thrown down through length of time to be renewed with diligence; appointing priests of the idols in every place and city, and over these, in each province, a high priest—some one of those in public life who had been most conspicuously distinguished through every public service—setting them up with a company of soldiers and a bodyguard, and bestowing without restraint upon all the sorcerers, as upon pious men and beloved of the gods, governorships and the greatest privileges.
Setting out from these things, he vexed and oppressed, not one city nor one region, but the whole of the provinces under him utterly, with exactions of gold and silver and untold treasures, with most grievous impositions and divers condemnations now of one kind, now of another. And, taking away from the wealthy the substance acquired from their forefathers, he bestowed in a mass riches and heaps of treasure upon the flatterers about him.
Indeed he was carried away into such an extravagance of drunken excess and intoxication that in his bouts he became deranged and lost his wits, and gave such commands when drunk as, when sobered up the next day, brought him to repentance. And leaving to none a surplus in carousing and profligacy, he set himself up as a teacher of wickedness to the rulers and the ruled about him, urging the soldiery to grow soft through all luxury and licentiousness, and inciting the governors and commanders of camps to advance against their subjects through robberies and greed, well-nigh as fellow-tyrants with him.
What need is there to mention the man's passionate and shameful deeds, or to number up the multitude of those debauched by him? Indeed it was not possible for him to pass through a city without in every case working corruptions of women and ravishings of virgins.
And these things succeeded with him against all, save only the Christians, who, despising death, counted his so great tyranny as nothing. For the men, having endured fire and iron and nailings, savage beasts and the depths of the sea, cuttings off of limbs and brandings, prickings and gougings out of eyes, and mutilations of the whole body, and besides these, famine and the mines and bonds, displayed in all things endurance for the sake of godliness rather than exchange the reverence due to God for idols.
And the women, again, no less than the men, being made manly by the teaching of the divine word, some, undergoing the same conflicts as the men, bore away equal prizes of virtue; while others, when dragged off to be corrupted, gave up their souls to death sooner than their bodies to corruption.
At least, alone of all those debauched by the tyrant, a Christian woman of Alexandria, most eminent and most illustrious, overcame by her most manly resolution the passionate and licentious soul of Maximin—illustrious in other respects for wealth and birth and education, yet counting all these second to chastity. And though he importuned her much, he was not able to put her to death, ready as she was to die, his desire prevailing over his rage rather; but, punishing her with banishment, he stripped her of all her substance.
And countless other women, who could not endure even to hear the threat of fornication from the rulers in their several provinces, underwent every kind of torture and racking and deadly punishment. Marvellous, then, were these also; but surpassingly the most marvellous was that woman at Rome, in truth the most nobly born and most chaste of all, against whom the tyrant there, Maxentius, doing the like to Maximin, attempted to deal wantonly.
For when she learned that those who served the tyrant in such matters had taken their stand at her house—and she too was a Christian—and that her own husband, and that one a prefect of the Romans, out of fear had given them leave to take and lead her away, she begged a little respite, as though to adorn her body, and went into her chamber; and, being left alone, she fixed a sword against herself, and dying on the spot, left her corpse to the procurers, but, by deeds themselves more eloquent than any voice, she showed forth to all men, both those now living and those who should come after, that the virtue among Christians is the one possession unconquerable and imperishable.
So great, indeed, was the rush of wickedness brought together at one and the same time, wrought by the two tyrants who had divided between them the East and the West. And who, searching out the cause of so many evils, would hesitate to declare it to be the persecution against us? Seeing that this great confusion did not cease before the Christians recovered their freedom of speech.