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As I have advanced thus far in my history, and have given an account
of the death of George and of Theodoritus, I deem it right to relate
some particulars concerning the death of the three brethren,
Eusebius, Nestabus, and Zeno. The inhabitants of Gaza, being
inflamed with rage against them, dragged them from their house, in
which they had concealed themselves and cast them into prison, and beat
them. They then assembled in the theater, and cried out loudly
against them, declaring that they had committed sacrilege in their
temple, and had used the past opportunity for the injury and insult of
paganism. By these shouts and by instigating one another to the murder
of the brethren, they were filled with fury; and when they had been
mutually incited, as a crowd in revolt is wont to do, they rushed to
the prison. They handled the men very cruelly; sometimes with the
face and sometimes with the back upon the ground, the victims were
dragged along, and were dashed to pieces by the pavement. I have been
told that even women quilted their distaffs and pierced them with the
weaving spindles, and that the cooks in the markets snatched from their
stands the boiling pots foaming with hot water and poured it over the
victims, or perforated them with spits. When they had torn the flesh
from them and crushed in their skulls, so that the brain ran out on the
ground, their bodies were dragged out of the city and flung on the spot
generally used as a receptacle for the carcasses of beasts; then a
large fire was lighted, and they burned the bodies; the remnant of the
bones not consumed by the fire was mixed with those of camels and
asses, that they might not be found easily. But they were not long
concealed; for a Christian woman, who was an inhabitant, though not
a native of Gaza, collected the bones at night by the direction of
God. She put them in an earthen pot and gave them to Zeno, their
cousin, to keep, for thus God had informed her in a dream, and also
had indicated to the woman where the man lived: and before she saw
him, he was shown to her, for she was previously unacquainted with
Zeno; and when the persecution had been agitated recently he remained
concealed. He was within a little of being seized by the people of
Gaza and being put to death; but he had effected his escape while the
people were occupied in the murder of his cousins, and had fled to
Anthedon, a maritime city, about twenty stadia from Gaza and
similarly favorable to paganism and devoted to idolatry. When the
inhabitants of this city discovered that he was a Christian, they beat
him terribly on the back with rods and drove him out of the city. He
then fled to the harbor of Gaza and concealed himself; and here the
woman found him and gave him the remains. He kept them carefully in
his house until the reign of Theodosius, when he was ordained bishop;
and he erected a house of prayer beyond the wails of the city, placed
an altar there, and deposited the bones of the martyrs near those of
Nestor, the Confessor. Nestor had been on terms of intimacy with
his cousins, and was seized with them by the people of Gaza,
imprisoned, and scourged. But those who dragged him through the city
were affected by his personal beauty; and, struck with compassion,
they cast him, before he was quite dead, out of the city. Some
persons found him, and carried him to the house of Zeno, where he
expired during the dressing of his cuts and wounds. When the
inhabitants of Gaza began to reflect on the enormity of their crime,
they trembled lest the emperor should take vengeance on them.
It was reported that the emperor was filled with indignation, and had
determined upon punishing the decuria; but this report was false, and
had no foundation save in the fears and self-accusations of the
criminals. Julian, far from evincing as much anger against them as he
had manifested against the Alexandrians on the murder of George, did
not even write to rebuke the people of Gaza. On the contrary, he
deposed the governor of the province, and held him as a suspect, and
represented that clemency alone prevented his being put to death. The
crime imputed to him was, that of having arrested some of the
inhabitants of Gaza, who were reported to have begun the sedition and
murders, and of having imprisoned them until judgment could be passed
upon them in accordance with the laws. "For what right had he,"
asked the emperor, "to arrest the citizens merely for retaliating on a
few Galileans the injuries that had been inflicted on them and their
gods?" This, it is said, was the fact in the case.
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