This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV Of divers Instruments employed for Scourging the Blessed Martyrs HAVING expounded the divers sorts of bonds and thongs and the nature of the wooden horse, we must next turn our attention to naming the various kinds of whips and scourges. For it was the frequent habit of the Heathen (as shown by sundry instances already quoted from the History of the Saints, for special ensample those of St. Crescentianus, St. Regina, virgin and martyr, and Bishop Bassus), after binding the Christians to the horse, to beat them pitifully with rods, cudgels, whips, and the like; then to flay them with iron claws or similar contrivances; finally to roast them with torches, burning brands, and red-hot metal plates. Accordingly, in the first place, we propose to speak of whipping instruments; next, of iron hooks, claws, and currycombs; lastly, of torches, brands, and fiery plates. Now as to the first named, you must know these were in use among the Ancients of many kinds, as lashes, scourges, cudgels, rods, scorpions, thongs, and loaded whips. OF LASHES. Plautus speaks of lashes, in the Epidicus, in the following terms: -- Ita non omnes ex cruciatu poterunt eximere Epidicum. Periphanem emere lora vitti . . . Also Terence, Adelphi: -- Nam si molestus pergis esse, jam intro abripiere, atque ibi Usque ad necem operiere loris. So too Cicero, Philippics: -- Cum eum jussu Antonii in convivio servi publici loris caeciderunt. (So all his friends shall not save Epidicus. I saw Periphanes buying lashes. For if you are going to be troublesome, you shall be rushed off indoors, and there lashed to death. When the public slaves scourged him with lashes at a feast by Antonius' orders.) Similar mention is found again and again in the Acts of the...