Chapter XXXVI.—Magic Arts of Maxentius against Constantine; and Famine at Rome.

But the crowning point of the tyrant’s wickedness was his having recourse to sorcery: sometimes for magic purposes ripping up women with child, at other times searching into the bowels of new-born infants. He slew lions also, and practiced certain horrid arts for evoking demons, and averting the approaching war, hoping by these means to get the victory. In short, it is impossible to describe the manifold acts of oppression by which this tyrant of Rome enslaved his subjects: so that by this time they were reduced to the most extreme penury and want of necessary food, a scarcity such as our contemporaries do not remember ever before to have existed at Rome.^31223122    1709, Molz. &c., add “nor anywhere else,” but Bag. is undoubtedly right in translating simply “ever before.” The chapter is found substantially and in part word for word in the Church History, 8. 14.