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| That Maximin, who had persecuted the Christians, was compelled to fly, and conceal himself in the Disguise of a Slave.
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Chapter
LVIII.—That Maximin, who had
persecuted the Christians, was compelled to fly, and conceal himself in
the Disguise of a Slave.
Such was the punishment which he underwent who had commenced the
persecution. He,3157
however, of
whom we are now speaking, who had been a witness of these things, and
known them by his own actual experience, all at once banished the
remembrance of them from his mind, and reflected neither on the
punishment of the first, nor the divine judgment which had been
executed on the second persecutor.3158
The
latter had indeed endeavored to outstrip his predecessor in the career
of crime, and prided himself on the invention of new tortures for us.
Fire nor sword, nor piercing with nails, nor yet wild beasts or the
depths of the sea sufficed him. In addition to all these, he discovered
a new mode of punishment, and issued an edict directing that their
eyesight should be destroyed. So that numbers, not of men only, but of
women and children, after being deprived of the sight of their eyes,
and the use of the joints of their feet, by mutilation or
cauterization, were consigned in this condition to the painful labor of
the mines. Hence it was that this tyrant also was overtaken not long
after by the righteous judgment of God, at a time when, confiding in
the aid of the demons whom he worshiped as gods, and relying on the
countless multitudes of his troops, he had ventured to engage in
battle. For, feeling himself on that occasion destitute of all hope in
God, he threw from him the imperial dress which so ill became him, hid
himself with unmanly timidity in the crowd around him, and sought
safety in flight.3159
| 3159 He
was defeated by Licinius, who had much inferior forces. Compare
Prolegomena, under Life, and references. |
He afterwards lurked about the
fields and villages in the habit of a slave, hoping he should thus be
effectually concealed. He had not, however, eluded the mighty and
all-searching eye of God: for even while he was expecting to pass the
residue of his days in security, he fell prostrate, smitten by
God’s fiery dart, and his whole body consumed by the stroke of
Divine vengeance; so that all trace of the original lineaments of his
person was lost, and nothing remained to him but dry bones and a
skeleton-like appearance. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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