Fig. 77.—The Three Hebrew Children.
The persecuted saints who dared to encounter death and danger in their most dreadful forms rather than deny their faith, found great consolation in the remembrance of God’s deliverance of his servants in the days of old. With the bloodthirsty cry of the ribald plebs of Rome—Christiani ad leones—still ringing in their ears, and, it may be, with the roar of the savage beasts of prey crashing on their shuddering nerves, they were sustained by the thought of the fidelity of those ancient worthies who, for their integrity to God, braved the flames of the fiery furnace and the perils of the lions’ den. The three Hebrew children are generally exhibited with the oriental tiara and tunics. In the foregoing
example from the cemetery of St. Priscilla, a dove is shown bringing an olive branch, the pledge of victory and peace.
Fig. 78.—The Three Hebrew Children.
In [Fig. 78], from the cemetery of Hermes, they are shown as standing in a “burning fiery furnace,” whose flames, though heated seven times hotter than their wont, play lambently around them without even singeing their garments.
In the following example from the Catacomb of St. Agnes the furnace is reduced to a shallow vessel in which the Hebrews stand unhurt. This has been incorrectly interpreted as a representation of martyrdom by boiling in oil. Its association, however, with the figure of Daniel in the lions’ den, and its general resemblance to other groups of the same subject, unquestionably