priests in Abyssinia that have been detected there, in these latter days, have been stoned to death, and their bodies lie still in the streets of Gondar, in the squares or waste-places, covered with the heaps of stones which occasioned their death by being thrown at them. There are three of these heaps at the church of Abbo, all covering Franciscan friars; and, besides them, a small pyramid over a boy who was stoned to death with them, about the first year of the reign of David the IV.[1] This boy was one of four sons that one of the Franciscan friars had had by an Abyssinian woman in the reign of Oustas. In Persia we find, that Pagorasus (according to Ctesias[2]) was stoned to death by the order of the king; and the same author says, that Pharnacyas, one of the murderers of Xerxes, was stoned to death likewise.
Among capital punishments may be reckoned likewise the plucking out of the eyes, a cruelty which I have but too often seen committed in the short stay that I made in Abyssinia. This is generally inflicted upon rebels. I have already mentioned, that, after the slaughter of the battle of Fagitta, twelve chiefs of the Pagan Galla, taken prisoners by Ras Michael, had their eyes torn out, and were afterwards abandoned to starve in the valleys below the town. Several prisoners of another rank, noblemen of Tigré, underwent the same misfortune; and, what is wonderful, not one of them died in the operation, nor its consequences, though performed in the coarsest manner with an iron forceps, or pincers.Xenophon
