‘When all was at the worst,’ he said, ‘it seemed to me that music sounded in my ears, and a fair youth with wings stood by me who wiped the perspiration from my forehead. And seeing him I felt that I could hold out even to death.’
‘Try a woman this time,’ said Tigellinus.
The executioners seized the deaconess Phœbe, who, since she left Cenchreæ with the Epistle to the Romans, had stayed and worked in Rome; and with her they seized two other virgins who were also deaconesses.
But the constancy of womanhood also remained unshaken, and the Præfect began to fear that the attempt to secure evidence would fail as completely as in his plot against Octavia. He stamped, and cursed the Christians by all his gods, and raved impotently against their brutal obstinacy, as effort after effort failed. Then he ran his experienced eyes over the throng, and fixed them on one man whose abject face seemed to promise good effects from the application of terror. His name was Phygellus.
‘Seize that man,’ he said to the lictors.
‘Oh, do not torture me!’ exclaimed the wretch. ‘I am not—I am not, indeed, a Christian.’
The other Christians turned their eyes upon him with a look of reproach, and he trembled; but he continued to asseverate, ‘I am not a Christian.’
‘Then how came you to be arrested in the assembly of those vagabonds?’
‘They seduced me; they bewitched me; they are sorcerers.’
‘Then throw these grains of frankincense on the fire in honour of Jupiter, and worship the Genius of the Emperor.’