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WHEN Julian had made his impiety openly known the cities were
filled with dissensions. Men enthralled by the deceits of idolatry
took heart, opened the idols' shrines, and began to perform those
foul rites which ought to have died out from the memory of man. Once
more they kindled the fire on the altars, befouled the ground with
victims' gore, and defiled the air with the smoke of their burnt
sacrifices. Maddened by the demons they served they ran in corybantic
frenzy round about the streets, attacked the saints with low stage
jests, and with all the outrage and ribaldry of their impure
processions.
On the other hand the partizans of piety could not brook their
blasphemies, returned insult for insult, and tried to confute the
error which their opponents honoured. In their turn the workers of
iniquity took it ill; the liberty allowed them by the sovereign was an
encouragement to audacity and they dealt deadly blows among the
Christians.
It was indeed the duty of the emperor to consult for the peace of his
subjects, but he in the depth of his iniquity himself maddened his
peoples with mutual rage. The deeds dared by the brutal against the
peaceable he overlooked and entrusted civil and military offices of
importance to savage and impious men, who though they hesitated
publicly to force the lovers of true piety to offer sacrifice treated
them nevertheless with all kinds of indignity. All the honours
moreover conferred on the sacred ministry by the great Constantine
Julian took away.
To tell all the deeds dared by the slaves of idolatrous deceit at that
time would require a history of these crimes alone, but out of the vast
number of them I shall select a few instances. At Askalon and at
Gaza, cities of Palestine, then of priestly rank and women who had
lived all their lives in virginity were disembowelled, filled with
barley, and given for food to swine. At Sebaste, which belongs to
the same people, the coffin of John the Baptist was opened, his
bones burnt, and the ashes scattered abroad.
Who too could tell without a tear the vile deed done in Phoenicia?
At Heliopolis by Lebanon there lived a certain deacon of the name of
Cyrillus. In the reign of Constantine, fired by divine zeal, he
had broken in pieces many of the idols there worshipped. Now men of
infamous name, bearing this deed in mind, not only slew him, but cut
open his belly and devoured his liver. Their crime was not, however,
hidden from the all-seeing eye, and they suffered the just reward of
their deeds; for all who had taken part in this abominable wickedness
lost their teeth, which all fell out at once, and lost. too, their
tongues, which rotted away and dropped from them: they were moreover
deprived of sight, and by their sufferings proclaimed the power of
holiness.
At the neighbouring city of Emesa they dedicated to Dionysus, the
woman-formed, the newly erected church, and set up in it his
ridiculous androgynous image. At Dorystolum, a famous city of
Thrace, the victorious athlete AEmilianus was thrown upon a flaming
pyre, by Capitolinus, governor of all Thrace. To relate the tragic
fate of Marcus, however, bishop of Arethusa, with true dramatic
dignity, would require the eloquence of an AEschylus or a
Sophocles. In the days of Constantius he had destroyed a certain
idol-shrine and built a church in its place; and no sooner did the
Arethusians learn the mind of Julian than they made an open display of
their hostility. At first, according to the precept of the Gospel,
Marcus endeavoured to make his escape; but when he became aware that
some of his own people were apprehended in his stead, he returned and
gave himself up to the men of blood. After they had seized him they
neither pitied his old age nor reverenced his deep regard for virtue;
but, conspicuous as he was for the, beauty alike of his teaching and
of his life, first of all they stripped and smote him, laying strokes
on every limb, then they flung him into filthy sewers, and, when they
had dragged him out again, delivered him to a crowd of lads whom they
charged to prick him without mercy with their pens. After this they
put him into a basket, smeared him with pickle and honey, and hung him
up in the open air in the height of summer, inviting wasps and bees to
a feast. Their object in doing this was to compel him either to
restore the shrine which he had destroyed, or to defray the expense of
its erection. Marcus, however, endured all these grievous sufferings
and affirmed that he would consent to none of their demands. His
enemies, with the idea that he could not afford the money from
poverty, remitted half their demand, and bade him pay the rest; but
Marcus hung on high, pricked with pens, and devoured by wasps and
bees, yet not only shewed no signs of pain, but derided his impious
tormentors with the repeated taunt, "You are groundlings and of the
earth; I, sublime and exalted." At last they begged for only a
small portion of the money; but, said he, "it is as impious to give
an obole as to give all." So discomfited they let him go, and could
not refrain from admiring his constancy, for his words had taught them
a new lesson of holiness.
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