The legend of the Thundering Legion, supported as it is by the medals 78 and the column of Antoninus, commemorates, indeed, the deliverance of the Roman army by a timely shower; but the Emperor ascribed that deliverance not to the prayers of the Christians, but to his own appeal to the heathen gods,[90] and there is no evidence that he ever relaxed the severity of the persecution. The ferocity of the brutal Commodus[91] was tempered by the influence of his concubine, Marcia, and Christianity spread among the highest ranks; but persecution did not entirely cease. Apollonius, a senator 79 of the empire, was put to death at Rome, and we read of numerous martyrdoms elsewhere. A Christian inscription commemorates an officer of Commodus, and Procurator of the Imperial household, who was “received to God”--RECEPTVS AD DEVM--A. D. 217.[92] On the death of this emperor the persecution raged with such violence that, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, many martyrs were burned, crucified, and beheaded every day.[93] _Non licet esse vos_--“It is not lawful for you to exist”--was the stern edict of extermination pronounced against the saints. Christianity had little favour to expect from a military despot like Septimius Severus, whose dying counsel to his successor expressed the principle of his government--“Be generous to the soldiers and trample on all besides.” The revived accusations against the new faith called forth the bold defence, or rather defiance, of Tertullian, one of the noblest monuments of the primitive ages. In this reign the sanctity of the Christian cemeteries was first violated, and that not at Rome but in Africa, where the persecution was most virulent. “The mob assails us with stones and flames with the frenzy of bacchanals,” says Tertullian; “They do not even spare the Christian dead, but tear them from the rest of the tomb, from the asylum of death, cut them in pieces, and rend them asunder.”[94]