Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typ...os. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Of the Wooden Horse as an Instrument of Martyrdom; likewise of many and sundry sorts of Bonds Wooden Horse as an instrument of torture is alluded to both by Cicero and by many other Ancient Writers,?by Cicero in the Pro Deiotaro, the Pro Milone, and the Philippics. Other authors which mention the same are Valerius Maximus, Quintilian, Seneca, Ammianus Marcellinus,?likewise innumerable Histories and Acts of the Martyrs, specially those of St. Crescentianus, Sts. Dorothy, Agatha, and Eulalia, Virgins and Martyrs, Sts. Felix and Fortunatus, Sts. Alexander and Bassus, Bishops and Martyrs,?not to name a countless host of others of either sex. Beside the Writers and Lives of Saints above referred to, mention is likewise made of the Wooden Horse by St. Cyprian, in his Epistle to Donatus and elsewhere, by St. Jerome, St. Augustine, Eusebius, Isidore, and others?as also by Prudentius again and again in his Hymns. All these agree that the Horse was an instrument of torture anciently employed for forcing the truth from suspected or guilty persons. So Cicero, in his Pro Deiotaro, writes : "Bythe custom of our ancestors a slave may bring no charge against his master, even under examination by torture, when pain can force the truth from the most unwilling witness. Yet such was the influence brought to bear on this slave, that the man whom he could not so much as name when on the horse, he openly accuses now he is set free," and again, "To elicit facts, the horse is the proper place ; to discuss points of law, the Court." The same may be gathered from what Ammianus Marcellinus says, "Though he stood bent double under the wooden horse, yet he persisted in a stubborn and uncompromising denial." Next, the wooden horse was further applied to the purpose of torturing men and r...Detailed info »« Brief info