His throne without blemish.” And when the judge heard this, he was straightway greatly troubled and filled with wrath, and he commanded them to bring her and to cast her into the cauldron. Then the virgin said unto him, “I adjure thee, by the head of the Emperor, if thou condemnest me to this thing of thine own self, to command them to put me into the cauldron little by little, without stripping my apparel from me, so that thou mayest know the patient endurance which I have through Christ for the sake of my purity.” And as they were dipping her little by little into the cauldron, for a very short space of time, immediately the pitch reached her neck it became cold; thus she delivered her soul unto God, and she was crowned with a good martyrdom. And a great congregation of holy men and women were made perfect (i.e., they suffered martyrdom) at that time in the church of Alexandria, and they became worthy of that land which the meek inherit. [Potamiaena was martyred, with her mother Marcella, in the reign of Septimius Severus.]
Here end the triumphs of Isidore, and Dorotheos, and the Virgin Potamiaena
Chapter iv. The History of Didymus [Born A.D 309 or 314]
TOGETHER with these I also saw a certain blessed man who was in Alexandria, and whose name was Didymus, and who also, with us, wrote these things; now he was blind, and he could not see at all; he was a marvellous man, and I went several times to see him. He was eighty years of age, and he told me that he became blind when he was four years old and could not see at all, but according to what he himself related to me, “After forty years I perceived the faces (or external aspects) of things.” And although this man had never learned the Testaments, and had never entered a school, the gift of an excellent and healthy mind had been given unto him by God, and he became learned in the knowledge of books through an enlightened understanding. And he was adorned with goodness and with the knowledge of the truth to such a degree, and was so ready and was so wholly wise that there was fulfilled in him that which was written, “The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind” (Psalm 146:8). He could interpret the Old and New Testaments word by word in its proper place, and had investigated carefully the commandments and could repeat all the words which were in them. And he was so thoroughly well acquainted with the belief of the truth (or of the true faith), and he comprehended so deeply all heresies that his knowledge
