Against Flaccus (186-190)

and while yet at a distance they perceived and recognised one another; at which he, perceiving in a moment the object for which they were come (for every man’s soul is very prophetic, especially of such as are in misfortune), turning out of the road, fled and ran away over the rough ground, forgetting, perhaps, that Andros was an island and not the continent. And what is the use of speed in an island which the sea washes all round? for one of two things must of necessity happen, either that if the fugitive advances further he must be carried into the sea, or else arrested when he has reached the farthest boundary.

Therefore, in a comparison of evils,

The officers therefore pursued him without stopping to take breath and arrested him; and then immediately some of them dug a ditch, and the others dragged him on by force in spite of all his resistance and crying out and struggling, by which means his whole body was wounded like that of beasts that are despatched with a number of wounds;

for he, turning round them and clinging to his executioners, who were hindered in their aims which they took at him with their swords, and who thus struck him with oblique blows, was the cause of his own sufferings being more severe; for he was in consequence mutilated and cut about the hands, and feet, and head, and breast, and sides, so that he was mangled like a victim, and thus he fell, justice righteously inflicting on his own body wounds equal in number to the murders of the Jews whom he had unlawfully put to death.

And the whole place flowed with blood which was shed from his numerous veins, which were cut in every part of his body, and which poured forth blood as from a fountain. And when the corpse was dragged into the trench which had been dug, the greater part of the limbs separated from the body, the sinews by which the whole of the body is kept together being all cut through.