[161] The story of the martyrdom of ten thousand Christians on Mount Ararat, under Trajan, and of the massacre of the Thundering Legion, consisting of six thousand Christians, by Maximian, are fictions of later date. In the Church of St. Gerion at Cologne are many reputed relics, chiefly heads, of these last. The legendary tendency to exaggeration in numbers seems irresistible. In commemorating the slaughter of the Innocents the Greek Church canonized fourteen thousand martyrs. Another notion, derived from Rev. xiv, 3, swelled the number to a hundred and forty-four thousand. The absurd story of the eleven thousand martyrs of Cologne is probably founded on a mistaken rendering of the inscription VRSVLA · ET · XI · MM · VV, interpreted, Ursula and eleven thousand virgins, instead of eleven virgin martyrs.--_Maitland_, p. 163. A Romish legend, of course exaggerated, says seventy thousand Christians suffered martyrdom in the Coliseum. [162] In Rock’s _Hierurgia_, a Romanist work, is an account of a Catacomb at Nipi, near Rome, in which are said to be thirty-eight martyr tombs, the epitaph of one of whom plainly asserts his death by decapitation: MARTYRIO CORONATVS CAPITE TRVNCATVS IACET--“Crowned with martyrdom, having been beheaded ... lies here.” The beautiful terseness of the following would seem to indicate their genuineness: “Paulus was put to death in tortures, in order that he might live in eternal bliss.” “Clementia, tortured, dead, sleeps; will rise.” From the following, found on a cup attached to a tomb, it would seem that the martyr was first compelled to drink poison, which proving ineffectual, he was dispatched by the sword: “The deadly draught dared not present to Constans the crown, which the steel was permitted to offer.” [163] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, viii, 9. [164] _Ibid._, viii, 12. [165] Called _ungulæ_, from their resemblance to the claws of a beast of prey. [166] See examples of the above named tortures in Eusebius’s _Hist. Eccles._, v, 2; vi, 41; viii, 14; _The Martyrs of Palestine_, viii; and Lactantius, _passim_. On the 22d of April, 1823, says Cardinal Wiseman, a grave in the Catacombs was opened, and, beside the white and polished bones of a youth of eighteen, whose epitaph it bore, was found the skeleton of a boy of twelve or thirteen, charred and blackened chiefly about the upper part. This was probably the remains of a youthful martyr hastily interred in another’s grave, to come to light after the lapse of fifteen centuries. Prudentius describes the martyr Hippolytus as torn limb from limb: Cernere erat ruptis compagibus ordine nullo, Membra per incertos sparsa jacere situs.