No more pathetic episode is contained in the whole range of the Martyrology than that of the youthful mother, Perpetua, who suffered at Carthage under Severus. Few can read unmoved the acts of her martyrdom, which bear the stamp of authenticity in their perfectly natural and unexaggerated tone, and the absence of miracle. Young--she was only twenty-two--beautiful, of noble family, and dearly loved, her heathen father entreated her to pity his gray hairs, her mother’s tears, her helpless babe. But her faith proved triumphant over even the yearnings of natural affection; and, wan and faint from recent childbirth pangs, she was led, with Felicitas, her companion, into the crowded amphitheatre, and exposed to the cruel horns of infuriate beasts. Amid the agonies of death, more conscious of her wounded modesty than of her pain, with a gesture of dignity she drew her disheveled robe about her person. She seemed rapt in ecstasy till by a merciful stroke of the gladiator she was released from her suffering, and exchanged the dust and blood of the arena, and the shouts of the ribald mob, for the songs of the redeemed, and the beatific vision of the Lord she loved. [95] Cædit et humanas hostias.--Lamprid., _Heliogabalus_. [96] A. D. 222. [97] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, vi, 21. [98] The site, according to tradition, of St. Maria in Trastevere. [99] A. D. 250-253. Execrabile animal Decius, qui vexaret ecclesiam.--Lactan., _de Mort. Persec._, c. 3, 4. He would rather tolerate, he said, a rival for his throne, than a bishop in Rome. Cypr., _Ep._ 53. [100] Called respectively _Sacrificati_, _Thurificati_, and _Libellatici_, of whom the first were esteemed the most guilty. The indignant rhetoric of Cyprian expresses his holy horror at this vile apostasy: “They made haste to give their souls the mortal wound.... That altar where he was about to die--was it not his funeral pile? Should he not have fled, as from his coffin or his grave, from that devil’s altar, when he saw it smoke and fume with stinking smell?... Thou thyself wast the sacrificial victim. Thou didst sacrifice thy salvation, and burn thy faith and hope in these abominable fires”--Nonne ara illa, quo moriturus accessit, rogus illi fuit? Nonne diaboli altare quod foetore tætro fumare et redolere conspexerat, velut funus et bustum vitæ suæ horrere ac fugere debebat?... Ipse ad aram hostia, victima ipse venisti. Immolâsti illic salutem tuam, spem tuam, fidem tuam, funestis illis ignibus concremâsti.--_De Lapsis_, p. 124. [101] Dionysius of Alexandria, in _Euseb._, vi, 41. [102] A. D. 254-259. [103] Ἐκκλησία, Euseb., vii, 10. [104] Milman, _Hist. of Christianity_, Am. ed., Book II., chap. vii. [105] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, vii, 10.