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chap, xxxvii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 93 adverse faction. 102 IV. The citizens who had been educated in the luxury of the Roman province were delivered, with exquisite cruelty, to the Moors of the desert. A venerable train of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, with a faithful crowd of four thousand and ninety-six persons, whose guilt is not precisely ascertained, were torn from their native homes, by the command of Hunneric. During the night, they were confined, like a herd of cattle, amidst their own ordure ; during the day, they pursued their march over the burning sands ; and, if they fainted under the heat and fatigue, they were goaded or dragged along, till they expired in the hands of their tor- mentors. 103 These unhappy exiles, when they reached the Moorish huts, might excite the compassion of a people, whose native humanity was neither improved by reason nor corrupted by fanaticism ; but, if they escaped the dangers, they were con- demned to share the distress, of a savage life. V. It is incum- bent on the authors of persecution previously to reflect, whether they are determined to support it in the last extreme. They excite the flame which they strive to extinguish ; and it soon becomes necessary to chastise the contumacy, as well as the crime, of the offender. The fine, which he is unable or unwill- ing to discharge, exposes his person to the severity of the law ; and his contempt of lighter penalties suggests the use and propriety of capital punishment. Through the veil of fiction and declamation, we may clearly perceive that the Catholics, more especially under the reign of Hunneric, endured the most cruel and ignominious treatment. 104 Respectable citizens, noble matrons, and consecrated virgins were stripped naked, and raised in the air by pullies, with a weight suspended at their feet. In this painful attitude their naked bodies were torn with scourges, or burnt in the most tender parts with red-hot plates of iron. The amputation of the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the right hand was inflicted by the Arians ; and, although the precise number cannot be defined, it is evident 102 See Procopius de Bell. Vandal. 1. i. c. 7, p. 197, 198. A Moorish prince endeavoured to propitiate the God of the Christians by his diligence to eraze the marks of the Vandal sacrilege. 103 See this story in Victor, ii. 8-12, p. 30-34. Victor describes the distress of these confessors as an eye-witness. 104 See the fifth book of Victor. His passionate complaints are confirmed by the sober testimony of Procopius and the public declaration of the emperor Jus- tinian (Cod. 1. i. tit. xxvii.).