ground, but the weight of the body tightening the bonds, and this they suffered not during the time of examination only, or while the governor was engaged with them, but almost the whole day. For when he went to others, he left his officers watching over these, to see if the extremity of torture should cause any to give way: and he charged them to be bound without mercy, but when at their last gasp to be let down and dragged along the ground. For he said that no account at all was to be taken of us, but we were to be both reputed and treated as non-existent. This last was a second torture which they superadded to their blows. There were those also who after their tortures were put in the stocks with their feet distended to the fourth hole, where they must needs lie down, not being able to hold themselves up through their wounds gaping over the whole body. Others flung on the pavement lay there through the repeated violence of their racking, the many signs of suffering over their body presenting a more fearful spectacle to those who looked on than the racking itself. Thus treated, some died under the torture, putting their adversary to shame by their endurance; some shut up in prison half-dead, after a few days expired through the extremity of their pains; the rest having treatment applied became still more resolute through the time spent in prison. And so when the choice was presented to them either to touch the abominable sacrifice, and depart unmolested, gaining by this course an execrable deliverance, or, not sacrificing, to receive sentence of death, without any doubt they joyfully went to death. For they knew what the sacred writings enjoin: ‘he that sacrifices to other gods shall be rooted out,’ and ‘thou shalt have no other gods but me.’ ”(319) This may suffice as a specimen of what was done during a course of years throughout the dominion of Galerius, Maximin, and Maxentius. It is in this persecution especially that the virgin martyrs suffered the extremity of the heathen malignity in the threatened loss of that purity which they valued more than life. And here a fellow-Christian at Alexandria disguising himself as a soldier was to S. Theodora the guardian which her angel himself became to S. Agnes at Rome. In this persecution also S. Vincent repeats in Spain the trial and the triumph of S. Laurence at Rome. The authentic account of his martyrdom shows the utmost point to which the most ingenious and the most ferocious cruelty could reach on the one side, and the most enduring patience on the other. But the numberless details concerning the sufferings of this time preserved to us show that it was indeed a conflict prolonged during eight years, in which the Roman state put forth the utmost strength which unlimited power guided by unhesitating cruelty could exert to destroy the Christian Church and name.