To the Martyrs 4

We know from the Lord's precept that the flesh is weak, the spirit willing. Let us not flatter ourselves, then, because the Lord granted that the flesh is weak. For he said first that the spirit is willing precisely to show which ought to be subject to which: namely, that the flesh should serve the spirit, the weaker the stronger, so that it may take strength from it. Let the spirit converse with the flesh about their common salvation, thinking no longer of the discomforts of prison but of the contest and battle itself. The flesh will perhaps fear the heavy sword, the lofty cross, the rage of beasts, the supreme penalty of fire, and every device of the executioner in torture. But let the spirit set before itself and the flesh that these things, harsh as they are, have nevertheless been accepted calmly by many, and even sought out willingly for the sake of fame and glory, and not by men only but also by women, so that you too, blessed women, may be worthy of your sex. It would take long to list one by one those who have put an end to themselves by the sword, led by their own spirit. Of women there are examples at hand. Lucretia, having suffered the violence of rape, drove a knife into herself in the sight of her relatives, to win glory for her chastity. Mucius burned his right hand on an altar so that fame might hold this deed of his. The philosophers did less: Heraclitus, who smeared himself with cow dung and burned himself up; likewise Empedocles, who leapt down into the fires of Mount Etna; and Peregrinus, who not long ago threw himself on a pyre; since women too have despised fire: Dido, when she was being forced to marry after a husband she dearly loved; likewise the wife of Hasdrubal, who, when Carthage was already burning, lest she see her husband a suppliant of Scipio, flung herself with her children into the fire of her homeland. Regulus, a Roman general, captured by the Carthaginians, refused to be exchanged alone for many Carthaginian captives, chose rather to be returned to the enemy, and, crammed into a kind of chest pierced from outside on every side with nails, felt as many crosses. A woman willingly sought out beasts, and snakes at that, more horrid than a bull or a bear: the asps which Cleopatra set upon herself so as not to fall into the hands of her enemy. But the fear of death is not as great as that of torture. Yet the Athenian courtesan yielded to the executioner: privy to a conspiracy, when she was tortured for it by the tyrant, she did not betray the conspirators, and at last bit off her tongue and spat it in the tyrant's face, so that he might know that tortures could achieve nothing against her even if they went on. And it is no secret that today among the Lacedaemonians the greatest festival is the diamastigosis, that is, the flogging. In this rite, before the altar, all the noble youths are beaten with whips while their parents and relatives stand by and urge them to hold out. For it will be counted an ornament and glory, and with a greater title, if the soul rather than the body has yielded to the blows. If, then, earthly glory is allowed so much from vigor of body and mind that it despises sword, fire, cross, beasts, and tortures for the reward of human praise, I can say that these sufferings are slight for obtaining heavenly glory and a divine reward. Is glass worth as much as a true pearl? Who, then, would not most gladly spend as much for the true as others spend for the false?