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De la mort des persécuteurs de l'église

XLIX.

Licinius, poursuivant sa victoire, Maximin se sauva dans les détroits du mont Taurus et s'y retrancha; mais les victorieux forcèrent ses retranchement et le contraignirent à se retirer à Tarse. Là, étant assiégé par mer et par terre, sans espérance de secours, il se résolut à la mort, le seul remède aux maux dont Dieu l'accablait. Mais auparavant il but et mangea avec excès, selon la coutume de ceux qui, pour la dernière fois, veulent goûter le plaisir de la bonne chère. Après quoi il prit la boisson mortelle; et comme le poison trouva un estomac rempli, sa force fut amortie; mais avec le temps il se tourna en une peste, afin que la vie de ce malheureux ne servit qu'à prolonger ses douleurs. Le venin commençant à agir lui consumait les entrailles avec des tourments qui le portaient jusqu'à la fureur, de sorte que, quatre jours avant sa mort, il prenait de la terre et la mangeait; il se battait la tête contre les murailles avec tant de violence que ses yeux sortirent de leur place. Enfin, devenu aveugle, il vit Dieu environné de ses anges qui lui faisaient son procès. Il s'écriait, comme ceux qui sont au milieu des tourments, que ce n'était pas lui, mais les autres qui étaient coupables; puis il avouait son crime, et priait le Christ avec larmes d'avoir égard à son repentir. Ainsi il rendit son âme criminelle au milieu des tourments et de ces funestes gémissements.

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Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died

Chap. XLIX.

While Licinius pursued with his army, the fugitive tyrant retreated, and again occupied the passes of mount Taurus; and there, by erecting parapets and towers, attempted to stop the march of Licinius. But the victorious troops, by an attack made on the right, broke through all obstacles, and Daia at length fled to Tarsus. There, being hard pressed both by sea and land, he despaired of finding any place for refuge; and in the anguish and dismay of his mind, he sought death as the only remedy of those calamities that God had heaped on him. But first he gorged himself with food, and large draughts of wine, as those are wont who believe that they eat and drink for the last time; and so he swallowed poison. However, the force of the poison, repelled by his full stomach, could not immediately operate, but it produced a grievous disease, resembling the pestilence; and his life was prolonged only that his sufferings might be more severe. And now the poison began to rage, and to burn up everything within him, so that he was driven to distraction with the intolerable pain; and during a fit of frenzy, which lasted four days, he gathered handfuls of earth, and greedily devoured it. Having undergone various and excruciating torments, he dashed his forehead against the wall, and his eyes started out of their sockets. And now, become blind, he imagined that he saw God, with His servants arrayed in white robes, sitting in judgment on him. He roared out as men on the rack are wont, and exclaimed that not he, but others, were guilty. In the end, as if he had been racked into confession, he acknowledged his own guilt, and lamentably implored Christ to have mercy upon him. Then, amidst groans, like those of one burnt alive, did he breathe out his guilty soul in the most horrible kind of death.