More Outrages of George

Then he seized forty men and beat them in a new way. He cut sticks fresh from the palm tree with the thorns still on them, and flogged them on the back so severely that some were under a doctor’s care for a long time because of the thorns that had broken off in their flesh, and others, unable to bear their sufferings, died. All those they had taken, along with the virgin, they sent off together into banishment to the Great Oasis. At first they would not let the bodies of those who had died be given up to their friends. They hid them however they pleased and threw them out unburied, so that they might not appear to know anything of these cruel proceedings. But in this their deluded minds misled them badly. For the relatives of the dead, rejoicing at their confession and grieving over the bodies of their loved ones, spread abroad all the more this proof of their impiety and cruelty. [a]

Moreover, they at once banished from Egypt and Libya the following bishops: Ammonius, Muis, Gaius, Philo, Hermes, Plenius, Psenosiris, Nilammon, Agathus, Anagamphus, Marcus, Ammonius, another Marcus, Dracontius, Adelphius and Athenodorus; and the presbyters Hierax and Dioscorus. They drove them out with such cruel treatment that some died on the way, and others in the place of their banishment. They also forced more than thirty bishops to flee. For their desire was, after the example of Ahab, to root out the truth completely if they could. Such are the outrages these impious men have committed.