Cornelius Sulla established the Forum; the Italians call this place a city, after the name of its founder himself. Here, as I was journeying to you, Rome, greatest of all things, hope arose in me that Christ would be propitious. Stretched on the ground, I rolled myself before the tomb which the holy martyr Cassianus adorns with his consecrated body. While weeping I reckoned with myself my own wounds and all the labors of life and the sharp pangs of my sorrows, I raised my face to heaven; there stood, facing me, the image of the martyr painted with the dyes of colors, bearing a thousand wounds, lacerated through all his limbs, displaying his skin broken with tiny punctures. Innumerable boys all around—a pitiable sight—were stabbing his pierced limbs with small styluses, with which they were wont to run over the writing-tablets of wax, jotting down the murmured lessons of the school. The sacristan, when consulted, said:
'What you behold, stranger, is no empty or old-wives' tale; the painting tells a history, which, handed down in books, shows the true faith of ancient time. He had presided over the studies of boys, and, hedged about by a great throng, the schoolmaster of letters had sat—skilled to comprehend all words in brief signs, and swiftly to follow speech with fleeting marks. His harsh and gloomy-seeming precepts had sometimes moved the youthful crowd with anger and fear; for a teacher is bitter to the learner who is still a youth, nor is the discipline of infancy sweet to anyone. Lo, a savage storm, shaking the faith, was oppressing the people consecrated to Christian glory. The director of his pupil flock is dragged from the midst of the assembly, because he had scorned to make supplication at the altars.'
To the artificer of punishments, asking what kind of skill the man so rebellious in lofty spirit might know, they reply: 'He governs a tender and boyish band, instructing them to mark words with feigned signs.' 'Lead him,' he cries out, 'lead the captive away, and let him be handed over of his own to those very little ones as one to be flogged. As they please, let them mock him, lacerate him with impunity, and dip their hands, dealt to them, in their master's blood; it is a pleasure to the pupils that the stern teacher himself should furnish them sport, he who restrained them too harshly.' His hands are bound behind his back, stripped of his cloak; the band stands ready, armed with sharp styluses. As much hatred as each had conceived in silent anger, burning, he at last pours out with gall set free.
Some hurl the fragile tablets and break them upon his face; the wood, struck back, springs apart from his battered forehead; the wax-coated box-wood tablets crack, dashed against his bloodied cheeks, and the page, broken short and oozing, reddens from the blow. Then others brandish the goads and the iron points, with that part by which the wax is written in plowed furrows, and that by which the cut letters are erased and the surface of the rough field, gleaming again, is renewed. On this side Christ's confessor is gouged, on that he is cut; one part enters the soft flesh, another splits the skin. The hands fixed all his limbs alike, the leader guiding, and just as many drops of his wounds drip down at once.
Greater was the torturer who had pricked the surface, the child, than he who had bored through the deep flesh; the former is slight, since the striker, death being denied him, knows only to rage with the goads of mere pain; the latter, the more deeply he strikes the vitals hidden within, gives the more healing, while he applies death near at hand. 'Be strong, I pray, and conquer my years with your strength; let cruelty supply what is lacking to my age!' But the tender and feeble child labors at his ill-attempted task; the torments grow, while the executioner flags. 'Why do you groan?' cries one, 'you yourself, the master, gave this iron and armed our hands. Behold, we give back to you the many thousands of marks, as many as, standing and weeping, we took down at your teaching. You cannot be angry that we write; you yourself used to command that the right hand should never carry a stylus at rest.'
'We do not seek, greedy teacher, the school holidays so often refused us with you as our master. It pleases us to make the points, and to interweave furrows with furrows, to entangle the bent strokes with chains. You may correct the verses inspected in a long row, if perchance an erring hand has gone faulty in some flawed place; exercise your authority, it is your right to punish a fault, if any of your pupils has marked you too slothfully.' Such games the boys played over the master's limbs, nor did the long punishment release the weary man. At last Christ, pitying him as he struggled, from on high bids the bonds of his breast be loosed, and relaxes the difficult delays of his soul and the cables of life, and frees the narrow recesses.
The blood, following the open ways from the inner fountain of the veins, forsakes the heart, and through so many openings of the pierced body departs that vital warmth, panting from the fibers. 'These are the things which, expressed in liquid colors, stranger, you marvel at; this is the glory of Cassianus. Make known, if you have any just or lovely vow, if you have any hope, if you burn for anything within! He hears, believe me, the prayers, this most prosperous martyr, all of them, and renders them ratified, those which he sees to be worthy.' I obey: I embrace the tomb, I pour out tears too, the altar grows warm with my mouth, the stone with my breast. Then I review all the secrets of my labor, then I murmur what I was seeking, what I was fearing: both the home left behind me under a doubtful lot, and the hope of future good, perchance wavering.