complete her pious task by the burial of these bodies in one great martyrium.
On another occasion, when the right of burial was refused and the bodies left by the roadside, panic was spread among the Magi, and triumph among the Christians, by a mysterious light that hovered above the corpses.[1] It was, of course, some kind of phosphorescence, but was universally regarded as a proof that these were indeed holy men that had been done to death; and the bodies were interred with all honour. It is an indication of the absolute changelessness of the East, that the phenomenon and the effect should have been exactly repeated during the Armenian massacres of 1896.
Persecution must have flagged at times, for the blood-thirst, even of an oriental fanatic, is not insatiable. It is probable, too, that the great Roman invasion of Julian gave some respite to Christians (a fact that would hardly have pleased the author of it), by giving King and nobles something else to do. This is not, however, directly referred to in the Acta. Certainly after its conclusion the storm burst out again with fresh violence, for there was fresh material to work on. Sapor, it will be remembered, insisted on a "rectification of frontier" as the price of peace; and five provinces, with six bishoprics and a population largely Christian, found themselves handed over by a Christian Emperor to Sapor. Jovian has a good name in ecclesiastical history, owing mainly to his Nicene Orthodoxy, and to the high opinion St. Athanasius entertained of him. Something, however, must be entered on the other side when we remember that, in making peace, he not only incurred the military shame of handing over to Persia the maiden fortress that his enemy had never been
- ↑ Bedj., iv. 137.
