Tired with slaughter, at length, several governors of provinces represented to the imperial court, the impropriety of such conduct. Hence many were respited from execution, but, though they were not put to death, as much as possible was done to render their lives miserable, many of them having their ears cut off, their noses slit, their right eyes put out, their limbs rendered useless by dreadful dislocations, and their flesh seared in conspicuous places with red-hot irons. It is necessary now to particularize the most conspicuous persons who laid down their lives in martyrdom in this bloody persecution. Sebastian, a celebrated martyr, was born at Narbonne, in Gaul, instructed in the principles of christianity at Milan, and afterward became an officer of the emperor's guard at Rome. He remained a true christian in the midst of idolatry; unallured by the splendours of a court, untainted by evil examples, and uncontaminated by the hopes of preferment. Refusing to be a pagan, the emperor ordered him to be taken to a field near the city, termed the Campus Martius, and there to be shot to death with arrows; which sentence was executed accordingly. Some pious christians coming to the place of execution, in order to give his body burial, perceived signs of life in him, and immediately moving him to a place of security, they, in a short time effected his recovery, and prepared him for a second martyrdom; for, as soon as he was able to go out, he placed himself intentionally in the emperor's way as he was going to the temple, and reprehended him for his various cruelties and unreasonable prejudices against christianity. As soon as Diocletian had overcome his surprise, he ordered Sebastian to be seized, and carried to a place near the palace, and beaten to death; and, that the christians should not either use means again to recover or bury his body, he ordered that it should be thrown into the common sewer. Nevertheless, a christian lady, named Lucina, found means to remove it from the sewer, and bury it in the catacombs, or repositories of the dead. The christians, about this time, upon mature consideration, thought it unlawful to bear arms under a heathen emperor. Maximilian, the son of Fabius Victor, was the first beheaded under this regulation. Vitus, a Sicilian of considerable family, was brought up a christian; when his virtues increased with his years, his constancy supported him under all afflictions, and his faith was superior to the most dangerous perils. His father, Hylas, who was a pagan, finding that he had been instructed in the principles of christianity by the nurse who brought him up, used all his endeavours to bring him back to paganism and at length sacrificed his son to the idols, June 14, A. D. 303.