A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

532 The Absolute Monarchyof
sex or age was regarded; and because of their great
multitude they were not burnt one after another, but a
herd of them were encircled by the same fire; and servants
with millstones tied about their necks were cast into the
sea. . . . Orders also had gone to Maximian Herculius
and Constantius, requiring their concurrence in the execution
of the edicts; for in matters even of such mighty importance
their opinion was never asked. A person of no
merciful temper, Herculius yielded ready obedience, and
enforced the edicts throughout his dominions of Italy.
Constantius, on the other hand, lest he should have seemed
to dissent from the injunction of his superiors, permitted
the demolition of churches—mere walls, capable of being
built up again—but he preserved entire that true temple
of God, which is the human body.
IV.
The Toleration Edict op Galerius
Failure of
persecution
acknowledged.
Lactantius,
The Manner
in which the
Persecutors
died, xxxiv.
Amongst our other arrangements, which we are always
making for the use and profit of the commonwealth, we
for our part had heretofore endeavored to set all things
right according to
the ancient laws and public order of
the Romans, and to compass this also that the Christians
too who had left the persuasion of their own fathers should
return to a better mind; seeing that through some strange
reasoning such wilfulness had seized the Christians and
such folly possessed them, that, instead of following those
constitutions of the ancients which peradventure their
own ancestors had first established, they were making
themselves laws for their own observance, merely according
to their own judgment and as their pleasure was, and
in divers places were assembling sundry sorts of peoples.
In short,
when a command of ours had been set forth
to the effect that they were to betake themselves to the