The Martyrs of Egypt

Such, then, was the contest of the Egyptians who fought out the struggle for godliness at Tyre. But one may admire too those of them who were martyred in their own land. There ten thousand men, together with women and children, despised this passing life for the sake of our Savior’s teaching and endured deaths of every kind. [a] Some, after being scraped and racked and cruelly scourged, and after countless other tortures, varied and terrible even to hear of, were given to the fire. Some were drowned in the sea; some boldly offered their heads to those who cut them off; some died under their tortures; others perished of hunger. Still others were crucified, some in the way usual for criminals, others more cruelly still, nailed head downward and kept alive until they died of hunger on the cross itself.