Fortunately from the middle of the third Century onwards we have a fairly continuous history of a single 'public' (Alexandria) which is lacking before this time. The Alexandrian populace were noted for their tumultuous disposition, but we have no reliable account of their behavior towards the Christians until the time of Severus, 202 A.D. In the account given by Eusebius of the martyrdom of the beautiful virgin, Potamiaena, it is stated that: "the people attempted to annoy and insult her with abusive words." As however the intervention of a single officer sufficed to protect her from the people on this occasion, the public sentiment cannot have been inflamed to any alarming extent. If we may trust Palladius, her martyrdom was the result of a plot of a would-be ravisher and in any case it was not the product of any spontaneous popular movement. In the period between 202 A.D. and 249 A.D. a well developed tradition of hatred and violence grew up in the popular mind. We have no record of the steps in the process but the extant accounts of the Decian and Valerian persecutions in Alexandria leave no doubt of the fact. These persecutions can only be called 'legal' by a violent stretch of verbal usage. They were mob lynchings, sometimes sanctioned by the forms of law, but quite as often without even the barest pretense of judicial execution. They were quite as frequent and as savage in the later part of the reign of Philip, as in the time of Decius. They were not called forth by any imperial edict--they preceded the edict by at least a year and were of a character such as no merely governmental, legal process would ever, or could ever, take on. Mobbing Christians had become a form of popular sport, a generally shared sort of public amusement--exciting and not dangerous. The letter of Bishop Dionysius makes this very clear. To quote: "The persecution among us did not begin with the royal decree but preceded it an entire year. The prophet and author of evils to this city moved and aroused against us the masses of the heathen rekindling among them the superstition of their country and finding full opportunity for any wickedness. They considered this the only pious service of their demons that they should slay us." Then follows a long list of mob lynchings of which we take a single specimen: "They seized Serapion in his own house and tortured him and having broken all his limbs, they threw him headlong from an upper story."[17] "And there was no street, nor public read, nor lane open to us night or day but always and everywhere all them cried out that if anyone would not repeat their impious words, he should be immediately dragged away and burned. And matters continued thus for a considerable time. But a sedition and civil war came upon the wretched people and turned their cruelty toward us against one another. So we breathed for a while as they ceased from their rage against us."[18]