You all know the excellent story of King Diocletian I join.
Recently found, don't remember where and I hope it's not a repost, 3 superb pics to illustrate the end of the martyrdom of St Catherine :
Everybody was just waiting for one thing: the destruction of her breasts. One more lash each, Lucius estimated and then they'd start on them. He'd never seen a scourging this harsh. How many had she taken? A hundred? A hundred and twenty? She would die anyway, he suspected, even without being decapitated.
Marcus, sweat dripping from his brow, flung the whip at her again. It crashed into her upper belly. Her breasts leapt as she jerked. There was something pitiful about seeing this once proud, beautiful woman reduced to this bleeding, shivering wreck. Gellus flayed across her ribs. She was like a carcass hanging in an abattoir now, limply draped on the post. And then the centurion ordered them to stop.
What was he doing? Were they going to spare her breasts?
No. He ordered a soldier to throw cold water over her. It was one of the young recruits who fetched a bucketful from the pump and approached her. He stood anxiously in front of the bloodied figure, his eyes barely able to raise themselves from her pristine breasts, then threw it hurriedly into her face. She coughed and twitched, blinking rapidly. It had worked; there was terror again in her face. “Proceed,” said the centurion.
Marcus smiled and walked up to her. He grabbed her right breast in his left hand and squeezed it, forcing is fingers deep into the soft flesh, laughing mockingly. She stared at him, fury in her eyes as water dripped from her hair. Marcus walked back and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He ran in, drew back the scourge and with tremendous power smashed it into her breasts. The hooks dug into the left side of the left breast, tearing the skin. The knots and barbs thumped into the meat of the breasts, breaking the skin, leaving livid wounds in the streaks left by the leather.
She shrieked and the breasts quivered both with the force of the whip and her agonized attempts to breathe. Gellus, with his familiar flicking technique, flayed half the skin from her right breast. Lucius hated to see them destroyed and yet he couldn't tear his eyes away. Marcus, clearly weary, swept another blow into the top of the breasts, scouring lines along the soft skin. Gellus, ripped a lash across her left nipple, leaving it gaping, blood dripping steadily out.
“Two more,” said the centurion. Marcus summoned up one last blow, the main force of the lash striking across the areola. She was howling uncontrollably, her body shaking as Gellus inflicted the final blow, dragged down across the top of her right breast so the hooks embedded in the skin. He let go of his whip and it hung from her. There was laughter from the soldiers and he stepped forward and pulled it free, yanking downwards to tear even more of the flesh.
Her body was a mess of blood from neck to ankle. She shook violently, head bowed, breath coming in wavering spurts. They unfastened her wrists and she collapsed into the bloodied sand at the base of the pillar, lying awkwardly, too exhausted to move until they dragged her across the yard for her final torment. A trail of red was left in the sand behind her.