The singer's voice was so pure and pathetic that it had touched both him and his wife and they had at once purchased the girl and her brother for a small sum.

He had simply paid what the soldier asked, not regarding the children in the light of slaves; nor had he had any description of them written out, though it was, no doubt, in his power to treat them as slaves and to sell them again, since the sale had taken place before witnesses who might still be found.

He had afterwards learnt from the girl that her parents were Christians and had settled in Antioch only a few years previously; but she had no friends nor relatives there.

Her father, being a tax-collector in the service of the Emperor, had moved about a great deal, but she remembered his having spoken of Augusta Treviroruin in Belgica prima, as his native place .-- [Now Trier or Treves, on the Moselle.] Agne had witnessed the attack on her father's house by the angry mob who had killed her parents, their two slaves, and her elder brother.

Her father must certainly have been an official of some rank, and probably, as it would seem, a Roman citizen, in which case--as Porphyrius agreed--both the young girl and her little brother could legally claim their freedom.