86
THE DECLINE AND FALL
appear in a Barbarian dress; and those who presumed to neglect the royal mandate were rudely dragged backwards by their long hair.[1] The Palatine officers who refused to profess the religion of their prince were ignominiously stripped of their honours and employments; banished to Sardinia and Sicily; or condemned to the servile labours of slaves and peasants in the field of Utica. In the districts which had been peculiarly allotted to the Vandals, the exercise of the Catholic worship was more strictly prohibited: and severe penalties were denounced against the guilt both of the missionary and the proselyte. By these arts, the faith of the Barbarians was preserved, and their zeal was inflamed; they discharged, with devout fury, the office of spies, informers, or executioners; and, whenever their cavalry took the field, it was the favourite amusement of the march to defile the churches and to insult the clergy of the adverse faction.[2] IV. The citizens who had been educated in the luxury of the Roman province were delivered, with exquisite cruelty, to the Moors of the desert. A venerable train of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, with a faithful crowd of four thousand and ninety-six persons, whose guilt is not precisely ascertained, were torn from their native homes, by the command of Hunneric. During the night, they were confined, like a herd of cattle, amidst their own ordure; during the day, they pursued their march over the burning sands; and, if they fainted under the heat and fatigue, they were goaded or dragged along, till they expired in the hands of their tormentors.[3] These unhappy exiles, when they reached the Moorish huts, might excite the compassion of a people, whose native humanity was neither improved by reason nor corrupted by fanaticism; but, if they escaped the dangers, they were condemned to share the distress, of a savage life. V. It is incumbent on the authors of persecution previously to reflect, whether they are determined to support it in the last extreme. They excite the flame which they strive to extinguish; and it soon becomes necessary to chastise the contumacy, as well as the crime, of the offender. The fine, which he is unable or unwilling to discharge, exposes his person to the severity of the law; and
- ↑ See these preludes of a general persecution, in Victor, ii. p. 3, 4, 7, and the two edicts of Hunneric, l. ii. p. 35 [c. 13], 1. iv. p. 64 [l. iii. c. 2, ed. Halm].
- ↑ See Procopius de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 7, p. 197, 198. A Moorish prince endeavoured to propitiate the God of the Christians by his diligence to eraze the marks of the Vandal sacrilege.
- ↑ See this story in Victor, ii. 8-12, p. 30-34. Victor describes the distress of these confessors as an eye-witness.
