Identifier: christianheroesm00fost (find matches)
Title: Christian heroes and martyrs
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: (Foster, William A.) (from old catalog)
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ds of angry facesranged around him, called upon them in a solemn, deep-toned voicewhich resounded through the great enclosure. These were his words:Do not, said he, requite Gods mercy in turning away the swords ofyour enemies by murdering each other! Angry shouts and cries at once drowned his voice: This is noplace for preaching!—the old customs of Rome must be observed!—On, gladiators! Thrusting aside the stranger, the gladiators wouldhave again attacked each other, but the man stood between, holdingthem apart, and trying in vain to be heard. Sedition ! sedition ! downwith him! was then the cry; and the gladiators, enraged at the inter-ference of an outsider with their chosen vocation, at once stabbedhim to death. Stones, or whatever missiles came to hand, also raineddown upon him from the furious people, and thus he perished, in themidst of the arena. His dress showed him to be one of the hermits who vowed them-selves to a holy life of prayer and self-denial, and who were rever-
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TELEMACHUS SEPARATES THE GLADIATORS AND LOSES HIS OWN LIFE. 158 THE WORLDS CHRISTIAN MARTYRS. enced by even the thoughtless and combat-loving Romans. The few who knew him told how he had come from the wilds of Asia on a pilgrimage, to visit the churches and keep his Christmas at Rome; they knew he was a holy man, and that his name was Telemachus—no more. His spirit had been stirred by the sight of thousands flocking to see men slaughter one another, and in his simple-hearted zeal he had tried to convince them of the cruelty and wickedness of their conduct. He had died, but not in vain. His work was accomplished at the moment he was struck down, for the shock of such a death before their eyes turned the hearts of the people: they saw the hideous aspects of the favorite vice to which they had blindly surrendered themselves; and from the day Telemachus fell dead in the Colosseum, no other fight of gladiators was ever held there. Conquest of Rome by the Goths, a. d. 410. Although the Go

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