The Eighth Year of the Persecution, Commenced, in the Year 309

It is related that at this time the kinds of torture and of putting to death were many. Some were beheaded with the axe, as was mostly done with the martyrs in Arabia. Some had their legs broken on the wheel, as happened to those who confessed the name of Christ in Cappadocia. Others were hung up by their heels, with the head close to the ground, and then suffocated by a small fire, as happened in Mesopotamia. Some had their noses, ears, hands, feet, and other parts of the body cut off, as was done to those at Alexandria. At Antioch some were roasted on frying pans, not to death, but to make the pain greater. But the sufferings inflicted upon the poor martyrs in Pontus are horrible to tell; for some had sharp splints of reed thrust between the nails and the flesh of their fingers; others had melted lead poured over their naked bodies; some had their private parts singed and seared. In inventing these tortures the judges and proconsuls competed with one another, just as though they wanted to show by it their great ingenuity, and their tyranny against the Christians. See concerning this, A. Mell., folio 128, columns 1, 2. [n274-1]