A favorable and propitious day was sought for carrying out the affair and the Terminalia feast days, which occur seven clays before the Kalends of March (The feast of the Termini (rocks which marked the boundaries) and of the god Terminus occurred on the 23rd of February. Cf. Ovid, Fasti 2.639ff.; Prudentius, Contra Symmachum 2.1006ff.; and Augustine, City of God 7.7.), were selected especially, so that a terminus, as it were, should be placed on this religion. 'That day was the first of death and it was first the cause of evils (Vergil, Aeneid 4.169-170.),’ those which befell themselves and the world. When this day dawned—one of the old men being consul for the eighth time, the other for the seventh (In 303, the two Augusti, Diocletian and Maximian, were consuls for the eighth and seventh time, respectively.)—suddenly, while it was still not full daylight, the prefect came to the church with leaders and tribunes and officers of the treasury. They tore down the door and searched for a picture or image of God. When the Scriptures were found, they were burned. The chance for booty was given to all. There was pillaging, trepidation, running about all around.

The rulers themselves in their observatory-site (because the appointed church was visible as they looked up from the palace because of its high position) for a long time argued together, whether it would be necessary for fire to be applied. Diocletian won, having a cautious attitude, lest part of the city be destroyed when a great conflagration (such as the persecution would warrant) should be set. For many great houses encircled the church on all sides.

So the praetorians came in a drawn up battle line with axes and other implements; and, throwing these from all sides, they leveled that most outstanding temple to the ground in a few hours.

Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, trans. Sister Mary Francis MacDonald (Lactantius, The Minor Works, Washington 1965), chap. 12, pp. 151–152.

Biographical Note
Lactantius, Lucius Caelius Firmianus (l´shs s´ls fûrm´ns lktn´shs) (KEY) , c.260–A.D. 340, Christian author and apologist, b. Africa. He taught rhetoric at Diocletian’s school in Nicomedia and during the persecutions was converted to Christianity. Later (c.316) he was Latin tutor at Trier to Crispus, Constantine’s son. His works, which were influenced by Cicero and Seneca, were sincere, well-written expositions of Christian doctrine, but some of his theological details have been pronounced erroneous. Among his works are The Divine Institutions (Divinae institutiones), the Epitome, and On God’s Wrath (De ira Dei). On the Death of the Persecutors (De mortibus persecutorum), telling of the horrible end of such emperors as Nero, Domitian, and Decius, is a chief source for the history of the persecutions. The poem On the Phoenix (De ave pheoenice), a source of Cynewulf’s Christ, is possibly by Lactantius.

See Excerpts from the Works of Lactantius, tr. by W. Fletcher (1972).

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2001 Columbia University Press.