OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 177 were the meanest and most abject among them, parti- chap cularly those of the servile condition, whose Uves were ' esteemed of little value, and whose sufferings were viewed by the ancients with too careless an indiffer- ence ^ The learned Origen, who, from his experience as well as reading, was intimately acquainted with the history of the christians, declares, in the most express terms, that the number of martyrs was very incon- siderable ^ His authority would alone be sufficient to annihilate that formidable army of martyrs, whose relics, drawn for the most part from the catacombs of Rome, have replenished so many churches'^, and whose marvellous achievements have been the subject of so many volumes of holy romance*. But the general assertion of Origen may be explained and confirmed by the particular testimony of his friend Dionysius, who, in the immense city of Alexandria, and under the rigorous persecution of Decius, reckons only ten men spectacle : and when he arrived at Troas, he received tlie pleasing intelli- gence, that the persecution of Antioch was already at an end. •> Among the martyrs of Lyons, (Euseb. 1. v. c. 1.) the slave Blandina was distinguished by more exquisite tortures. Of the five martyrs so much celebrated in the acts of Felicitas and Perpetua, two were of a servile, and two others of a very mean condition. •= Origen advers. Celsum, 1. iii. p. 116. His words deserve to be tran- scribed : 'OXi'yoi Kara KaipovQ, Kai a<j)6dpa ivafjiOntjroi TTtpl rHiv Xptffria- vCJv ^loaijitiag Ttdvi]Kaci. <* If we recollect that all the plebeians of Rome were not christians, and that all the christians were not saints and martyrs, we may judge with how much safety religious honours can be ascribed to bones or urns, indiscrimi- nately taken from the public burial place. After ten centuries of a very free and open trade, some suspicions have arisen among the more learned catholics. They now require, as a proof of sanctity and martyrdom, tiie . letters B M, a vial full of red liquor, supposed to be blood, or the figuie of a palm-tree. But the two former signs are of little weight ; and with regard to the last, it is observed by the critics, 1. That the figure, as it is called, of a palm, is perhaps a cypress, and perhaps only a stop, the flourish of a comma, used in the monumental inscriptions. 2. That the palm was the symbol of victory among the pagans. 3. That among the christians it served as the emblem, not only of martyrdom, but in general of a joyful resurrection. See the epistle of P. Mabillon on the worship of unknown saints, and Muratori sopra le Antichita Italiane, Dissertat. Iviii.
- As a specimen of these legends, we may be satisfied with ten thousand
christian soldiers crucified in one day, either by Trajan or Hadrian, on mount Ararat. See Baronius ad iMartyrologium Romanum ; Tillemont, Mem. Ecclesiast. tom. ii.part ii. p. 438; and Geddes's Miscellanies, vol. ii. p. -203. The abbreviation of Mii.. which may signify either so/t/jers or itunisands, is said to have occasioned some extraordinary mistakes. VOL. II, N
