II.
And to narrate their virtue and their manly
endurance under every torment, what language would suffice? For
as every one who chose was at liberty to abuse them, some beat them
with wooden clubs,1317
| 1317
ξύλοις. What is
meant, however, may be the instrument called by the Romans
equuleus, a kind of rack in the shape of a horse, commonly used
in taking the evidence of slaves. |
and others with
rods, and others with
scourges, and others again with thongs, and others with
ropes.
And the
spectacle of these modes of
torture had great variety in it,
and exhibited vast
malignity. For some had their
hands bound
behind them, and were suspended on the rack and had every limb in their
body stretched with a certain
kind of pulleys.
1318
Then after all this the
torturers, according to their orders, lacerated with the sharp
iron
claws
1319
| 1319 The
text gives ἀμυντηρίοις
ἐκόλαζον, for which
Nicephorus reads ἀμυντηριοις
τὰς
κολάσεις. The
ἀμυντηρια were
probably the Latin ungulæ, an instrument of torture like
claws. So Rufinus understands the phrase. |
the whole body,
not merely, as in the case of murderers, the sides only, but also the
stomach and the
knees and the cheeks. And others were hung up in
mid-
air, suspended by one
hand from the portico, and their sufferings
were fiercer than any other
kind of
agony by reason of the distention
of their joints and limbs. And others were bound to
pillars, face
to face, not touching the ground with their
feet, but hanging with all
the weight of the body, so that their
chains were drawn all the more
tightly by reason of the tension. And this they
endured not
simply as long as the
governor1320
| 1320
ἡγεμών. That is probably
the Roman Præfectus Augustalis. |
spoke with them, or had
leisure to hear them, but well-nigh through the
whole day. For when he passed on to others he left some of those
under his
authority to keep watch over these former, and to observe
whether any of them, being overcome by the torture, seemed
likely to yield. But he gave
them orders at the same time to cast them into chains without sparing,
and thereafter, when they were expiring, to throw them on the ground
and drag them along. For they said that they would not give
themselves the slightest concern about us, but would look upon us and
deal with us as if we were nothing at all. This second mode of
torture our enemies devised then over and above the
scourging.
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