Chap. XLIX.

While Licinius pursued with his army, the fugitive tyrant retreated, and again occupied the passes of mount Taurus; and there, by erecting parapets and towers, attempted to stop the march of Licinius. But the victorious troops, by an attack made on the right, broke through all obstacles, and Daia at length fled to Tarsus. There, being hard pressed both by sea and land, he despaired of finding any place for refuge; and in the anguish and dismay of his mind, he sought death as the only remedy of those calamities that God had heaped on him. But first he gorged himself with food, and large draughts of wine, as those are wont who believe that they eat and drink for the last time; and so he swallowed poison. However, the force of the poison, repelled by his full stomach, could not immediately operate, but it produced a grievous disease, resembling the pestilence; and his life was prolonged only that his sufferings might be more severe. And now the poison began to rage, and to burn up everything within him, so that he was driven to distraction with the intolerable pain; and during a fit of frenzy, which lasted four days, he gathered handfuls of earth, and greedily devoured it. Having undergone various and excruciating torments, he dashed his forehead against the wall, and his eyes started out of their sockets. And now, become blind, he imagined that he saw God, with His servants arrayed in white robes, sitting in judgment on him. He roared out as men on the rack are wont, and exclaimed that not he, but others, were guilty. In the end, as if he had been racked into confession, he acknowledged his own guilt, and lamentably implored Christ to have mercy upon him. Then, amidst groans, like those of one burnt alive, did he breathe out his guilty soul in the most horrible kind of death.  

XLIX. Sequenti autem Licinio cum exercitu tyrannum, profugus concessit, et rursus Tauri montis angustias 0270C petiit: munimentis ibidem ac turribus fabricatis, 0271A iter obstruere conatus est; et inde dextrorsum perrumpentibus omnia victoribus, Tarsum postremo confugit. Ibi cum jam terra marique peteretur, nec ullum speraret refugium, angore animi ac metu confugit ad mortem, quasi ad remedium malorum quae Deus in caput ejus ingessit. Sed prius cibo se infersit, ac vino ingurgitavit, ut solent hi qui hoc ultimo se facere arbitrantur. Et sic hausit venenum. Cujus vis, referto stomacho repercussa, valere non potuit in praesens, sed in languorem malum versa pestilentiae similem, ut diutius protracto spiritu cruciamenta sentiret. Jam saevire in eum coeperat virus; cujus vi cum praecordia ejus furerent, insustentabili dolore usque ad rabiem mentis elatus est, adeo ut per dies quatuor insania percitus, haustam manibus 0271B terram velut esuriens devoraret. Deinde post 0272A multos gravesque cruciatus, cum caput suum parietibus infligeret, exilierunt oculi ejus de caveis. Tunc demum, amisso visu, Deum videre coepit candidatis ministris de se judicantem. Exclamabat ergo sicut ii qui torqueri solent; et non se, sed alios fecisse dicebat. Deinde, quasi tormentis adactus, fatebatur, Christum subinde deprecans, et plorans ut suimet misereretur. Sic inter gemitus, quos tamquam cremaretur, edebat, nocentem spiritum detestabili genere mortis efflavit.