CHAPTER III

THE NEW STATUE ERECTED AT ANTIOCH

AFTER he had thus waged war against us by every means, and had caused our brethren with all diligence and care to be hunted up in their retreats, as thieves and malefactors, and had plotted against us by slander and accusation, and been the cause of death to vast numbers, he finally erected a certain statue of Jupiter Philius, with a variety of mummery and magic rites. And after reciting forms of initiation, and pronouncing dire inauspicious mysteries before it, and inventing execrable modes of expiation, he even went so far as to exhibit his impostures to the emperor, by the oracles which he pretended to utter. Thus, by a flattery grateful to the emperor, he roused the demon against the Christians, and said that God had commanded to expel the Christians as his enemies, beyond the limits of the city and the adjacent territory.