The assertion of Socrates[209] that in Rome the fast lasted only three weeks is now regarded on all hands as erroneous, all the more so as Socrates adds—also incorrectly—“Saturdays and Sundays excepted.” In Rome, Saturday was always kept as a fast. His statement cannot be accepted against the clear evidence of Leo I. concerning Lent, even although Valesius and Baillet wish to defend it. That the fast of forty days was not originally observed in all parts of the Church, and only gradually came into force, can probably be explained by the fact that there were already fast days enough. There are, for instance, many indications that the custom of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays all the year through—the period between Easter and Pentecost excepted—was fairly generally observed. Wednesday was kept as a fast, because on that day our Lord had been betrayed to the Jews; Friday, because it was the day of His Passion. At Carthage, where we find reliable evidence for the practice, they were called the fasts of the stations.[210] Even in the East, the custom was apparently general.[211] The Apostolic Constitutions are acquainted with it; the so-called Apostolic Canons prescribe it;[212] the Canons of Hippolytus[213] refer to the fast of the fourth and sixth _feria_ as well as the fast of Lent. As these fasts are never mentioned in the literature of a later date, and altogether disappeared from practice, one is driven to the conclusion that, as the Lenten fast became more widely observed, these others fell out of use. However, the weekly fast-days continued to be observed for a long time together with the Lenten fast, and, among the Greeks, are observed even to the present day.[214] Not only Augustine mentions that, at the end of the fourth century, in Rome, Wednesdays, Fridays, and also Saturdays were fasted, but Innocent I. regarded it as a duty to fast on Saturday all the year round, and Prudentius also alludes to it.[215] In the Syrian Church the three weekly fasts appear to have been obligatory on Bishops and Priests alone.[216]