Defence of His Flight

And having seized upon forty men, he beat them after a new fashion. Cutting some sticks fresh from the palm tree, with the thorns still upon them, he scourged them on the back so severely, that some of them were for a long time under surgical treatment on account of the thorns which had broken off in their flesh, and others unable to bear up under their sufferings died. All those whom they had taken, and the virgin, they sent away together into banishment to the great Oasis. And the bodies of those who had perished they would not at first suffer to be given up to their friends, but concealed them in any way they pleased, and cast them out without burial, in order that they might not appear to have any knowledge of these cruel proceedings. But herein their deluded minds greatly misled them. For the relatives of the dead, both rejoicing at the confession, and grieving for the bodies of their friends, published abroad so much the more this proof of their impiety and cruelty. Moreover they immediately banished out of Egypt and Libya the following Bishops, Ammonius, Muïus, Gaïus, Philo, Hermes, Plenius, Psenosiris, Nilammon, Agathus, Anagamphus, Marcus, Ammonius, another Marcus, Dracontius, Adelphius, Athenodorus, and the Presbyters, Hierax, and Dioscorus; whom they drove forth under such cruel treatment, that some of them died on the way, and others in the place of their banishment. They caused also more than thirty Bishops to take to flight; for their desire was, after the example of Ahab, if it were possible, utterly to root out the truth. Such are the enormities of which these impious men have been guilty.