The Martyrs of the Palace

Beyond all who have ever been celebrated in song as admirable and famed for courage, whether among Greeks or barbarians, that time brought forth divine and distinguished martyrs in Dorotheus and the imperial servants who were with him. They had been counted worthy of the highest honor by their masters and were loved by them no less than true children; yet they held the insults and hardships suffered for godliness, and the many kinds of death newly devised against them, to be truly greater riches than the glory and luxury of this life. [a] We will tell how one of them ended his life, and leave our readers to judge from it what happened to the others. A man was brought out into the open in the city we have mentioned, before the rulers we spoke of. He was ordered to sacrifice, and when he refused, he was commanded to be stripped, hoisted up, and to have his whole body torn with whips until he gave in and did what he was ordered, even against his will. [b] When he remained unmoved under this suffering too, and his bones were already showing, they mixed vinegar with salt and poured it over the torn and festering parts of his body. When he trampled these pains underfoot as well, a gridiron and fire were dragged out. What was left of his body was burned by the fire like meat for eating, not all at once, so that he would not be released too quickly, but a little at a time. Those who laid him on the fire were not allowed to stop until, after all this, he should nod his assent to what was ordered. But he held fast to his purpose and, victorious, gave up his soul in the midst of the tortures. Such was the martyrdom of one of the imperial servants, truly worthy of his name, for he was called Peter. [c]

What befell the rest was no less, but we will pass it over to keep our account in proportion, recording only this: Dorotheus and Gorgonius, together with many others of the imperial household, after struggles of every kind, ended their lives by the noose and carried off the prizes of a divine victory. At this time Anthimus, who then led the church at Nicomedia, was beheaded for his witness to Christ. To him a whole crowd of martyrs was added. In those very days a fire broke out in the palace at Nicomedia, I do not know how, and a report spread, on false suspicion, that our people had set it. At the emperor’s nod the godly there were put to death in heaps, whole families together, some slaughtered by the sword, others perfected by fire. It is said that men and women alike leaped onto the pyre with a kind of divine and inexpressible eagerness. The executioners bound another crowd, took them out in boats, and threw them into the depths of the sea. [d] As for the imperial servants, who after their death had been committed to the earth with proper burial, their supposed masters thought it necessary to dig them up again and throw them too into the sea, so that no one would worship them lying in their tombs, regarding them, as they supposed, as gods. [f]

Such were the things done at Nicomedia at the beginning of the persecution. But not long afterward, when some in the region called Melitene, and others again around Syria, attempted to seize the throne, an imperial order went out that the heads of the churches everywhere should be shut up in prisons and chains. [g] The sight of what followed passed all description. Countless numbers were shut up in every place. The prisons everywhere, built long before for murderers and grave robbers, were now filled with bishops, presbyters and deacons, readers and exorcists, so that there was no longer any room left in them for those condemned for crimes. [h] Then further letters overtook the first, in which it was ordered that those in prison should be allowed to go free if they sacrificed, but that those who refused should be torn with countless tortures. And how, once again, could anyone count the number of martyrs in each province, and especially those in Africa, among the Moors, in the Thebaid and in Egypt? From Egypt, too, many went on into other cities and provinces and became famous for their martyrdoms. [i]