The Martyrs
The text commences with a snapshot image of the martyrs in question. And since martyr is the name given to those who have been executed or otherwise targeted for death specifically for exercising certain beliefs, that means that it begins as imagery that is a portrait of criminals considered a threat to the state:
This begins with a violent persecution being set on foot by the emperor Severus, in 202…Felicitas was seven months gone with child and Perpetua had an infant at her breast. Perpetua was of a good family, twenty-two years of age, and married to a person of quality in the city. She had a father, a mother, and two brothers. Her third brother, Dinocrates, died when he was about seven years old.
Visions
The narrator describes a number of visions throughout the text. Visions and dreams are a perfect place for a writer to exercise a talent for imagery because such figurative description is unbound by literal limitations. If it can happen in a vision, it can be vividly described, regardless of how bizarre or unlikely:
I saw a golden ladder that reached from earth to the heavens. It was so narrow that onlyone could mount it at a time. All sorts of iron instruments were fastened to both sides. I saw swords, lances, hooks, and knives. If anyone went up carelessly, he was in great danger of having his flesh torn by those weapons. At the foot of the ladder lay an enormous dragon, who kept guard to turn back and terrify those that endeavored to mount it.
The Serenity of the Cult
The imagery used to describe the emotional tenor of those sentenced to gruesome death for their beliefs sound unnervingly familiar to how modern-day cultists blithely marching to their own destruction behave. One might well inquire what, really, is the difference between Christian martyrs and those who have drank the Kool-Aid ever since it became a thing at the Jonestown Massacre:
The day of their triumph being come, they went out of the prison to go to the amphitheatre. Joy sparkled in their eyes and appeared in all their gestures and words. Perpetua walked with a composed countenance and easy pace, as a woman cherished by Jesus Christ, with her eyes modestly cast down. Felicitas went with her, following the men, not able to contain her joy.
The Martyrizing
Finally, the time comes for the actual process of becoming a martyr. Some martyrs have been stoned, others burned and at least one famous turned into a human pin cushion at the target of arrows. The method of martyrizing those mentioned here is perhaps the most unusual: being set upon by wild animals.
In the meantime, Perpetua and Felicitas had been exposed to a wild cow. Perpetua was first attacked and, the cow having tossed her up, she fell on her back. Then putting herself in a sitting posture and perceiving her clothes were tom, she gathered them about her in the best manner she could, to cover herself, thinking more of decency than her sufferings. Getting up, not to seem disconsolate, she tied up her hair, which was fallen loose.
