Peter Flees to Rome and the Monks Are Massacred

Sabinus takes not the slightest notice of the outrages committed when Lucius was installed, or of how those who were thrown out were treated, both in the courts and outside them: how some were put to all kinds of tortures, and others were sent into exile even after that agony. In fact, since he leaned halfway toward Arianism himself, he deliberately covers up the cruelties of his friends. Peter, however, exposed them in the letters he sent to all the churches after he had escaped from prison. For this bishop managed to escape from prison and fled to Damasus, bishop of Rome. [a]

Once the Arians, though they were not very many, had taken possession of the churches of Alexandria in this way, they soon obtained an imperial edict ordering the governor of Egypt to expel the supporters of the homoousian doctrine, and everyone else Lucius disliked, not only from Alexandria but from the whole country. After this they attacked the monasteries in the desert, disturbing them and harassing them terribly. Armed men fell in the most savage way on people who were completely defenseless and who would not lift a hand to fight off their violence, so that great numbers of victims who offered no resistance were slaughtered in this way, with a wanton cruelty beyond description.