Runaway Slaves at the Altar of the Great Church

While matters stood like this, an outrage was committed in the church. Some household slaves of a man of rank, who were foreigners, had been harshly treated by their master. They fled from him to the church, and they ran right up to the altar with their swords drawn. No pleading could persuade them to withdraw, so that they hindered the holy services. They stubbornly held their position for several days, brandishing their weapons at anyone who dared to come near them, and in fact they killed one of the clergy and wounded another. In the end they were driven to kill themselves. Someone who was present at this desecration of the sanctuary remarked that such a profanation was an evil omen. In support of his view he quoted these two lines of an ancient poet: [a]

Nor was the man who made this prediction disappointed in his gloomy forebodings. For these things foretold, it seems, a division among the people and the deposing of the man who caused it.