But beyond all words are also the maltreatments and pains which the martyrs in the Thebaid endured: torn over the whole body with sharp shells instead of claws until life departed; women bound by one foot and raised aloft and high in the air, head-downward, by certain devices lifted up on high, their bodies wholly naked and uncovered, presenting this most shameful and of all the cruellest and most inhuman spectacle to all who looked on.
Others again died bound to trees and branches; for, by certain devices drawing together to one point the strongest of the boughs, and stretching to either of these the legs of the martyrs, they let the branches go back to their own natural position, thus contriving a sudden tearing asunder of the limbs of those against whom they set their hands.
And all these things were carried out not for a few days or some brief time, but over a long interval of whole years: at one time more than ten being put to death, at another above twenty in number; at another time no fewer than thirty, and at one point even close upon sixty; and again at another time a hundred men in a single day were slain, together with quite young infants and women, condemned to varied and alternating punishments.
And we ourselves also, being present on the spots, observed many in a crowd in a single day, some enduring the cutting off of the head, others the punishment by fire, so that the murdering iron was blunted and, growing weak, was broken, and the very executioners, growing weary, relieved one another in turns.
And then too we beheld a most marvellous impulse, and a power and eagerness truly divine, in those who had believed on the Christ of God. For, no sooner was the sentence pronounced against the former, than others from this side and that leaped up to the tribunal before the judge, confessing themselves Christians—heedless in the face of dreadful things and the modes of manifold tortures, yet boldly speaking forth in the piety toward the God of the universe, and with joy and laughter and gladness receiving the final sentence of death, so that they sang psalms and sent up hymns and thanksgivings to the God of the universe until their very last breath.
Marvellous, then, were these also; but especially more marvellous were those who, having been distinguished in wealth and noble birth and reputation, in eloquence and philosophy, yet set all these in the second place after the true godliness and the faith in our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ.
Such was Philoromus, who had been entrusted with no mean office in the imperial administration at Alexandria, and who, along with his dignity and Roman rank, surrounded by soldiers as a bodyguard, sat in judgement each day; and Phileas, bishop of the church of the Thmuites, a man distinguished in the civil services and public functions of his native land, and in matters of philosophic learning.
These men, though countless persons of their kindred and other friends entreated them, and moreover the rulers of high rank, and besides even the judge himself besought them to have pity on themselves and to spare their children and wives, were in no way led on by so many to choose to cling to life and to despise the ordinances concerning the confession and denial of our Saviour; but with manly reasoning and philosophic—nay rather, with a godly and God-loving soul—standing firm against all the threats and insults of the judge, both had their heads cut off.