Aurelian himself seemed almost of the same mind, and I can hardly doubt would have ordered him to be released, but that Fronto at that moment approached him, and by a few of those words, which, coming from him, are received by Aurelian as messages from Heaven, put within him a new and different mind; for rising quickly from his seat he ordered the keeper of the vivaria to be brought before him. When he appeared below upon the sands, Aurelian cried out to him,
'Why, knave, dost thou weary out our patience thus—letting forth beasts already over-fed? Do thus again, and thou thyself shall be thrown to them. Art thou too a Christian?'
'Great Emperor,' replied the keeper, 'than those I have now let loose, there are not larger nor fiercer in the imperial dens, and since the sixth hour of yesterday they have tasted nor food nor drink. Why they have thus put off their nature 'tis hard to guess, unless the general cry be taken for the truth, "that the gods have touched them."
Aurelian was again seen to waver, when a voice from the benches cried out,
'It is, O Emperor, but another Christian device! Forget not the voice from the temple! The Christians, who claim powers over demons, bidding them go and come at pleasure, may well be thought capable to change, by the magic imputed to them, the nature of a beast.'
'I doubt not,' said the Emperor, 'but it is so. Slave! throw up now the doors of all thy vaults, and let us see whether both lions and tigers be not too much for this new necromancy. If it be the gods who interpose, they can shut the mouths of thousands as of one.
At those cruel words, the doors of the vivaria were at once flung open, and an hundred of their fierce tenants, maddened both by hunger and the goads that had been applied, rushed forth, and in the fury with which in a single mass they fell upon Probus—then kneeling upon the sands—and burying him beneath them, no one could behold his fate, nor, when that dark troop separated and ran howling about the arena in search of other victims, could the eye discover the least vestige of that holy man.—— I then fled from the theatre as one who flies from that which is worse than death.
Felix was next offered up, as I have learned, and after him more than fourscore of the Christians of Rome.
Rome continues the same scene of violence, cruelty and blood. Each moment are the miserable Christians dragged through the streets either to the tribunals of the judges, or thence, having received their doom, to the prisons.
Seeing, Fausta, that the Emperor is resolved that we shall not be among the sufferers, and that he is also resolved upon the total destruction of all within the walls of Rome, from which purpose no human power can now divert him, we feel ourselves no longer bound to this spot, and are determined to withdraw from it, either to Tibur or else to you. Were there any office of protection or humanity, which it were in our power to perform toward the accused or the condemned, you may believe that we should remain fixed to the post of duty. But the fearful sweep which is making, and yet to be made, of every living soul in Rome, leaves nothing for us to do but to stand idle and horror-struck witnesses of sufferings and wrongs, which we can do nothing to avert or relieve. Portia shares our sorrows, and earnestly entreats us to depart, consenting herself to accompany us.