Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| As the storm against us blew on without slackening into its sixth year, the mine in the Thebaid called Porphyrites, after the porphyry stone produced there, had for some time held a very great multitude of confessors of godliness. Of these, ninety-seven men, together with women and very small children, were sent before Palestine's governor. When they acknowledged the God of the universe and Christ, Firmilian, the governor sent here as Urban's successor, ordered, as though by imperial command, that the tendons of their left feet be cut through, sinews and all, with hot irons, and further that their right eyes first be gouged out with swords, membranes and pupils together, and then be destroyed completely, down to the very roots, with fire applied by hot irons. After that he handed them over to the mines of the province, to be worn down by toil and hardship.
2| Yet it was not only these, after suffering such things, whom we were to see with our own eyes. There were also those of Palestine who, as was related a little earlier, had been condemned to fight as boxers in single combat, since they would accept neither rations from the imperial treasury nor the training suited to boxing.
3| These men, brought for this reason not only before the procurators but before Maximin himself, displayed a most noble constancy of confession by enduring hunger and bearing the lash, and they suffered the same things as those already described, together with other confessors from Caesarea itself who were added to their number.
4| Close on their heels others were arrested at the city of Gaza while gathered for the reading of the divine Scriptures. Some of them endured the same injuries to feet and eyes as these; others underwent still greater ones and were put to the most fearful tortures on their sides.
5| One of them, a woman in body but a man in resolve, could not bear the threat of being made a prostitute and spoke some word against the tyrant for entrusting the government to such cruel judges. First she was scourged, and then she was hoisted up on the stake and her sides were lacerated.
6| While those appointed to the task, at the judge's order, pressed the tortures relentlessly and violently, another woman, who like the first had chosen the goal of virginity, could not endure the pitiless, cruel and inhuman things being done. She went beyond those fighters for freedom so celebrated among the Greeks. In body she was, to all appearance, quite slight and of a contemptible look, but she was otherwise strong in soul and held in her breast a resolve greater than her body. From the midst of the crowd she called out to the judge: "And how long will you torture my sister so cruelly?" Stung all the more bitterly, he at once ordered the woman seized.
7| Then she was dragged into the middle. Having called herself by the revered name of the Savior, she was first urged with words to sacrifice, and when she would not comply, she was hauled by force to the altar. But she acted in a manner worthy of her sister and held to her former zeal: with an unshaken and fearless foot she kicked the altar and overturned it, together with the fire that lay on it.
8| At this the judge, his anger sharpened like a wild beast's, first inflicted on her more tortures on her sides than on anyone ever before, all but longing to glut himself on her raw flesh. When his frenzy had at last had its fill, he yoked the two together, this woman and the one she had called her sister, and sentenced them to death by fire. Among them, the first was said to be from the country of Gaza; the other, one should know, came from Caesarea and was known to many, Valentina by name.
9| How could I worthily recount the martyrdom that came next, of which the thrice-blessed Paul was counted worthy? He was condemned to death in the same hour as these women, under a single sentence, and at the very point of his consummation he begged the man who was just about to behead him to grant him a little time.
10| Having obtained it, in a clear and ringing voice he first, through his prayers, sought from God reconciliation for those of his own people, imploring that freedom be granted them as quickly as possible. Next he asked for the Jews' access to God through Christ; then, going on in his speech, he prayed for the same things for the Samaritans as well. Those of the nations who lay in error and in ignorance of God he besought to come to knowledge of him and to take up true godliness; nor did he leave unattended the motley crowd then standing around him.
11| After all of these, O the great and inexpressible forbearance of the man! he prayed to the God of the universe on behalf of the judge who had set death as his penalty, and of the rulers over all, and also of the man who was all but ready to cut off his head, in the hearing of that man himself and of everyone present, begging that the sin committed against him should in no way be counted against them.
12| Having offered up these prayers and others like them in a loud voice, and having moved nearly everyone to pity and tears, as one being put to death unjustly, he composed himself in the customary way, held out his bare neck for the sword's blow, and was adorned with a divine martyrdom. This was in the month Panemus, on its twenty-fifth day, which would be called the eighth day before the Kalends of August. So ended the story of these men.
13| Not long afterward, a hundred and thirty wondrous champions of the confession of Christ came once more from the land of Egypt. By order of Maximin they had suffered in Egypt itself the same injuries to their eyes and feet as those before them, and they were sent off, some to the mines in Palestine already mentioned, and the others, as condemned men, to those in Cilicia.
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