PREFACE. XXIX
the description of the manner of his death Galerius must be the man described. The Coptic text and Lactantius! ‘ascribe him as being more wicked than any other man ‘upon earth, and it is well known that he was not only the f pst and principal cause of the persecution of the Chri- dans, but also the man who incited Diocletian to publish is edicts against the Christians. His appellation of ‘great overnor of the Persians’ was given to him by the Copts ecause of his celebrated defeat of Narses, king of ‘ersia, about 297 A. D2 The two edicts against the Uhristians which are attributed to Dadianus are no floubt those of Diocletian published at Nicomedia in the year 303." The first was directed against the property of the Christians, and the second against their lives: these facts agree exactly with the statements respecting the dicts of Dadianus given in the Coptic text. According o the statements in the Coptic account of the martyrdom f George he cannot have been finally put to death by the sword before 310 A. D.!. The Christian church grew and flourished under the first twenty years of the reign of Diocletian, A. D. 284-303, and it was not until galerms had conquered the Persians that any serious eheck was put upon Christianity. During the winter of the year 303 Galerius and Diocletian were at Nicomedia =.
1 De mortibus perseeutorum, cap. 4.
2 Gibbon, Decline and Fail, chap. viii. 7
3 Tillemont, Afémoires, v, p. 21.
4 Tt is usually thought that George was martyred at Nicomedia A. D. 303.
