According to the distribution of Roman provinces, Palestine may be considered as the sixteenth part of the Eastern empire: [183] and since there were some governors, who from a real or affected clemency had preserved their hands unstained with the blood of the faithful, [184] it is reasonable to believe, that the country which had given birth to Christianity, produced at least the sixteenth part of the martyrs who suffered death within the dominions of Galerius and Maximin; the whole might consequently amount to about fifteen hundred, a number which, if it is equally divided between the ten years of the persecution, will allow an annual consumption of one hundred and fifty martyrs.

Allotting the same proportion to the provinces of Italy, Africa, and perhaps Spain, where, at the end of two or three years, the rigor of the penal laws was either suspended or abolished, the multitude of Christians in the Roman empire, on whom a capital punishment was inflicted by a judicia, sentence, will be reduced to somewhat less than two thousand persons.

Since it cannot be doubted that the Christians were more numerous, and their enemies more exasperated, in the time of Diocletian, than they had ever been in any former persecution, this probable and moderate computation may teach us to estimate the number of primitive saints and martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the important purpose of introducing Christianity into the world.
[Footnote 181a: Perhaps there never was an instance of an author committing so deliberately the fault which he reprobates so strongly in others.

What is the dexterous management of the more inartificial historians of Christianity, in exaggerating the numbers of the martyrs, compared to the unfair address with which Gibbon here quietly dismisses from the account all the horrible and excruciating tortures which fell short of death?
The reader may refer to the xiith chapter (book viii.) of Eusebius for the description and for the scenes of these tortures .-- M.] [Footnote 182: Eusebius de Martyr.Palestin.c.13.He closes his narration by assuring us that these were the martyrdoms inflicted in Palestine, during the whole course of the persecution.

The 9th chapter of his viiith book, which relates to the province of Thebais in Egypt, may seem to contradict our moderate computation; but it will only lead us to admire the artful management of the historian.