Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The rest of the "obstinacy" you lump into that same chapter: that we refuse, out of sheer hardness and contempt of death, neither your swords nor your crosses, your beasts, nor fire, nor tortures. But surely all these things, among your own ancestors and forebears, were learned to be not merely endured without complaint but even weighed and praised as great virtue. How many men, and how great, has the sword sent forth as volunteers! I am ashamed to list them. As for the novelty of the cross — countless, obscure men have embraced it gladly; your own Regulus dedicated himself to it freely; the queen of Egypt made use of her own snakes; fire, after that Carthaginian woman — Dido herself, more resolute in her country's last hour than her husband Hasdrubal — had taught men to walk into it willingly. And torments were endured to exhaustion by an Attic woman who refused the tyrant, and at the last, so that neither body nor sex should yield, spat out her own bitten-off tongue, the whole ministry of her sworn confession performed by her mouth alone. Yet all this you credit to yourselves as glory, and to us as mere stubbornness. Go on, then — tear down the glory of your ancestors, so that you may tear down ours as well! Be content, for the moment, to strip even your own forebears' praises bare, so as to leave no room for ours! Perhaps you will say that the temper of those times demanded harder natures from a sterner antiquity; but now, in the calm of peace, tempers have grown gentler, and men's hearts kindlier even toward outsiders.
"Very well," you say, "compare yourselves to the ancients if you like; but we have to go after you for the hatred you show us, which we ourselves do not practice, because it is not even found among us." Answer, then, point by point. Do I not recognize the very same examples among you? If it is contempt of death that has made legends of the sword among your ancestors, then surely it is not love of life that binds you to the gladiator's oath, nor fear of death that enrolls you as soldiers. If for some woman a famous death by wild beasts is glorious, well, every day, in the midst of peace, men go to the beasts of their own free will. If none of you has yet, like Regulus, bargained with the cross, that engine for piercing the body, still, contempt of fire has already been achieved, since someone not long ago hired himself out to be clothed in a burning tunic and walk to a fixed spot regardless. If a woman's defiance under the lash impressed you, well, that too has just been matched by a man who, running the gauntlet of the beast-hunters' ranks, retraced his steps — not to mention the famous endurance of the Spartans.
XIX.