But of all those who have ever yet been celebrated as admirable and renowned for courage, whether among Greeks or barbarians, this occasion brought forth as divine and outstanding martyrs the imperial servants about Dorotheus. These, having been deemed worthy of the highest honour with their masters, and being no less than true children to them in affection, accounted the reproaches and toils for piety, and the manifold deaths newly devised against them, as truly greater riches than the glory and luxury of this life. Having recalled the manner of life's end that one of them met, we shall leave it to our readers to gather from it also the things that befell the others.
A certain man was brought into the midst, in the aforesaid city, under the rulers whom we have indicated. Being commanded therefore to sacrifice, when he stood firm, he was ordered to be lifted up on high naked, and to have his whole body torn with scourges, until, being overcome, he should do even against his will what was commanded.
But when, though suffering these things, he remained unmoved, they next, while his very bones were now showing through, mixed vinegar together with salt and poured it over the putrefied parts of his body. And when he trampled upon these pains also, a gridiron and fire were thereupon brought into the midst, and the remnants of his body, like flesh for eating, were consumed by the fire, not all at once, lest he should find a quick release, but little by little; nor were those who set him upon the pyre permitted to desist until, even after such sufferings, he should give assent to what was commanded.
But he, clinging fast to his purpose, victoriously gave up his soul in the very midst of the torments. Such was the martyrdom of one of the imperial servants, who was indeed worthy even of his name; for he was called Peter.
But the cases of the rest, being no worse, we shall pass over, sparing the due measure of our account, having only recorded this much: that Dorotheus and Gorgonius, together with many others of the imperial household, after conflicts of various kinds, departed this life by strangling, and so bore away the prizes of God-given victory.
At this time Anthimus, who then presided over the church at Nicomedia, was beheaded for his witness to Christ. And to him was added a whole throng of martyrs together; for—I know not how—when in those very days a fire broke out in the palace at Nicomedia, and through a false suspicion the report was spread that it had been attempted by our people, the God-fearing ones there were, at the imperial nod, slaughtered in heaps by whole families, some being butchered with the sword and others being perfected by fire. And the account holds that men together with women leaped upon the pyre with an unspeakable eagerness; while the executioners bound yet another multitude and cast them upon boats into the depths of the sea.
As for the imperial servants, whose bodies after death had been delivered to the ground with fitting burial, their reputed masters thought it needful afresh from the beginning to dig them up and to cast them also into the sea, lest any, regarding them as laid in tombs, should worship them—reckoning them indeed as gods, so at least they supposed. Such, then, were the things accomplished at Nicomedia at the beginning of the persecution.
And not long afterwards, when some in the region called Melitene, and again on the other hand others throughout Syria, had attempted to fasten upon the empire, an imperial command went forth that the presidents of the churches everywhere should be cast into prisons and bonds.
And the spectacle of the things that followed upon these surpassed all description: a countless multitude was shut up in every place, and the prisons everywhere, prepared long before for murderers and grave-robbers, were then filled with bishops and presbyters and deacons, readers and exorcists, so that no room any longer was left there for those condemned for crimes.
And again, when other letters overtook the first, in which it was ordered that those shut up, if they sacrificed, should be allowed to walk in liberty, but if they resisted, should be torn with countless tortures—how could anyone here again number the multitude of the martyrs in each province, and especially of those in Africa and among the nation of the Moors, and in the Thebaid and throughout Egypt? From this last country, some, advancing into other cities and provinces, became distinguished by their martyrdoms.