A circumstance with which we are unacquainted, and which was regarded as miraculous, opened Peter's prison. One evening, as many of the disciples were assembled in the house of Mary, mother of John-Mark, where Peter habitually dwelt, there was suddenly heard a knock at the door. The servant, named Rhoda, went to listen. She recognised Peter's voice. Transported with joy, instead of opening the door she ran back to announce that Peter was there. They regarded her as mad. She swore she spoke the truth. "It is his angel," said some of them. The knocking was heard repeatedly; it was indeed himself. Their delight was infinite. Peter immediately announced his deliverance to James, brother of the Lord, and to the other disciples. It was believed that the angel of God had entered into the prison of the apostle and made the chains fall from his hands and the bolts fly open. Peter related, in fact, all that had passed while he was in a sort of ecstasy; that after having passed the first and second guard, and overleaped the iron gate which led into the city, the angel accompanied him still the distance of a street, then quitted him; that then he came to himself again and recognised the hand of God, who had sent a celestial messenger to deliver him.[14.23] Agrippa survived these violences but a short time.[14.24] In the course of the year 44, he went to Cesarea to celebrate games in honor of Claudius. The concourse of people was extraordinary; and many from Tyre and Sidon, who had difficulties with him, came thither to ask pardon. These festivals were very displeasing to the Jews, both because they took place in the impure city of Cesarea, and because they were held in the theatre. Already, on one occasion, the king having quitted Jerusalem under similar circumstances, a certain Rabbi Simeon had proposed to declare him an alien to Judaism, and to exclude him from the temple. Herod Agrippa had carried his condescension so far as to place the Rabbi beside him in the theatre, in order to prove to him that nothing passed there contrary to the law,[14.25] and thinking he had thus satisfied the most austere, he allowed himself to indulge his taste for profane pomps. The second day of the festival he entered the theatre very early in the morning, clothed in a tunic of silver fabric, with a marvellous brilliancy. The effect of this tunic, glittering in the rays of the rising sun, was extraordinary. The Phœnicians who surrounded the king lavished upon him adulations borrowed from paganism. "It is a god," they cried, "and not a man." The king did not testify his indignation, and did not blame this expression. He died five days afterwards; and Jews and Christians believed that he was struck dead for not having repelled with horror a blasphemous flattery. Christian tradition represents that he died of a vermicular malady,[14.26] the punishment reserved for the enemies of God. The symptoms related by Josephus would lead rather to the belief that he