Note 83 — Chapter I · THE KING OF THE WOOD

P. Ribadeneira, Flos Sanctorum (Venice, 1763), ii. 93 sq.; Acta Sanctorum, August 13, pp. 4 sqq. (Paris and Rome, 1867). The merit of tracing the saint’s pedigree belongs to Mr. J. Rendel Harris. See his Annotators of Codex Bezae (London, 1901), pp. 101 sq. Prudentius has drawn a picture of the imaginary martyrdom which might melt the stoniest heart (Peristeph. xi. p. 282 sqq., ed. Th. Obbarius). According to the Acta Sanctorum the saint shared the crown of martyrdom with twenty members of his household, of whom nineteen were beheaded, while one of them, his nurse Concordia, was scourged to death (“plumbatis caesa”). It is an odd coincidence that his Greek prototype Hippolytus dedicated just twenty horses to Aesculapius (Pausanias, ii. 27. 4); and it is another odd coincidence, if it is nothing worse, that the bones of Orestes, the other mythical hero of Nemi, were buried beside the temple of Concordia in Rome, and that Servius, who mentions this tradition (on Virgil, Aen. ii. 116), should immediately afterwards quote the words “virgine caesa.” If we knew why the hero Hippolytus dedicated just twenty horses to the god who raised him from the dead, we might perhaps know why the saint Hippolytus went to heaven attended by a glorious company of just twenty martyrs. Bunsen courageously stood out for the historical reality of the martyr, whom he would fain identify with his namesake the well-known writer of the third century (Hippolytus and his Age, London, 1852, i. pp. 212 sqq.).