At this time Claudius had given orders for the suppression of Christianity. Two hundred and sixty Christians were condemned to work in the sand-pits on the Salarian way; but were afterwards brought into the amphitheatre, and were killed with arrows, and their bodies thrown on a pyre. Maris and his sons withdrew the bodies from the fire, and with the assistance of a priest, named John, they buried many of them in the catacomb on the Salarian way. And in the evening, passing under a house, they heard singing, and they knew that what they heard was a Christian canticle. Then they struck at the door, and those who were within feared to open, thinking it was the soldiers come to take them; but the bishop, who was with the congregation, went boldly to the door and opened it; then they knew that these were Christians who stood without; so they fell on their necks and kissed them. Now it fell out that Maris and his wife and sons were in the house of Asterius, a new convert, on a certain occasion, with Valentine the priest, when the soldiers entered the house and took all within before the Emperor, who remanded them to Muscianus, the prefect, to be by him sentenced according to their deserts. Muscianus ordered Maris and his two sons to be beaten, and then to be placed on the little horse and tortured with iron hooks and lighted torches, but Martha to stand by, and see her husband and children tormented. As they remained constant, he commanded their hands to be struck off. Then Martha stooped and dipped her finger in their blood, and signed her brow therewith. Exasperated to the last degree, the judge ordered Maris and the two sons to be decapitated in a sand-pit, and Martha to be drowned in a well, all which was carried into execution.[81] A pious matron, named Felicitas, rescued the bodies, and buried them in her farm. S. BASSIAN, B. OF LODI. (ABOUT A.D. 409.) [Roman and many other Martyrologies. Double feast with octave at Lodi. Authorities, his life by an anonymous author, of uncertain date, also the lections for this day in the Lodi Breviary. S. Ambrose, in his 60th letter, speaks of S. Bassian.]