His prefect Sallustius, though a heathen, did not approve of this; nevertheless, being commanded, he carried it out. He seized a certain young man, the first to come his way, Theodore by name, and from the first light of dawn until the tenth hour tortured him with such cruelty, employing so many successive executioners, that no age could recall a like deed. Yet that young man, hung aloft upon the rack while the torturer pressed upon his sides this way and that, did nothing else but with a calm and joyful countenance repeat over and over the psalm which the whole Church had sung the day before:
And when Sallustius, having spent all his cruelty, perceived that he had accomplished nothing, he received the young man back into prison and is said to have gone off to the Emperor and reported what he had done, warning him not to attempt anything of the kind in future, since otherwise he would be procuring glory for them and disgrace for himself. This Theodore we ourselves afterward saw at Antioch. And when we inquired of him whether he had felt the full force of the pain, he said that for his part he had felt little pain, but that a certain young man had stood by him who, as he sweated, wiped away his sweat with a most white cloth and frequently poured cold water over him; and that he had been so delighted thereby that he became more downcast at the moment when he was ordered to be taken down from the rack.
The Emperor therefore, having threatened that after the Persian victory he would more effectively crush the Christians, did indeed set out, but never returned. For there, run through—it is uncertain whether by his own men or by the enemy—he ended his life after one year and eight months of his presumptuously seized Augustan imperial rule.