proconsul of Asia, Statius Quadratus, mentioned in the report of the church of Smyrna, did not hold that office in A.D. 166, but in A.D. 155-156, the most important authorities have come to regard either A.D. 155 or A.D. 156 as the date of his martyrdom. Still some whose opinions are worthy of respect refuse to accept this view, pointing out the absence of that chronological statement from the report in Eusebius and to its irreconcilability with the otherwise well-supported facts, that Polycarp was on a visit to Rome in A.D. 155 (§ 37, 2), and that the reckoning of the day of his death in the report as ὄντος σαββάτου μεγάλου would suit indeed the Easter of A.D. 155, as well as that of A.D. 166, but not that of A.D. 156. [24] The legend of the _Legio fulminatrix_, that in the war against the Marcomanni in A.D. 174 the prayers of the Christian soldiers of this legion called forth rain and thunder, and thus saved the Emperor and his army from the danger of perishing by thirst, whereupon this modified law against the accusers of the Christians was issued, has, so far as the first part is concerned, its foundation in history, only that the heathen on the other hand ascribed the miracle to their prayer to _Jupiter Pluvius_. [25]--Regarding the persecution at Lyons and Vienne in A.D. 177, we also possess a contemporary report from the Christian church of these places (§ 32, 8). Bishop Pothinus, in his ninetieth year, sank under the effects of tortures continued during many days in a loathsome prison. The young and tender slave-girl Blandina was scourged, her body scorched upon a red-hot iron chair, her limbs torn by wild beasts and at last her life taken; but under all her tortures she continued to repeat her joyful confession: “I am a Christian and nothing wicked is tolerated among us.” Under similar agonies the boy Ponticus, in his fifteenth year, showed similar heroism. The dead bodies of the martyrs were laid in heaps upon the streets, until at last they were burnt and their ashes strewn upon the Rhone. =Commodus= (A.D. 180-192), the son of Marcus Aurelius, who in every other respect was utterly disreputable, influenced by his mistress Marcia, showed himself inclined, by the exercise of his clemency, to remit the sentences of the Christians. The persecution at Scillita in North Africa, during the first year of the reign of Commodus, in which the martyr Speratus suffered, together with eleven companions, was carried out in accordance with the edict of Marcus Aurelius.