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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The Roman city of Smyrna was in an uproar. Its citizens had flocked to the stadium where members of a sect of what the pagan Romans considered to be atheists were being forced, on pain of death, to worship Caesar. To the roaring of the crowd, one of them, a man named Germanicus, had refused. The presiding proconsul called for wild beasts--probably lions--to be loosed on the man. The crowd and the proconsul alike, overcome by the irrational siren song of blood lust, expected to relish in the man's fear of death. To their anger and dismay, Germanicus was brave beyond measure. He fought the beasts and incited their hunger-driven rage until at ...