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Life of St Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza
Mark the Deacon, tr. Hill, 1913
Chapter 64
And straightway they went with the governors and the troops and overturned the places of the idols of Gaza. Now there were in the city eight public temples1 of idols, of the Sun and of Aphrodite and of Apollo and of the Maiden and of Hecate and the temple called of the Hero, and the temple of the Fortune of the City, which they called the Tychaion, and the Marneion, which they said was the temple of the Cretan-born Zeus, which they accounted to be more famous than all the temples in the world. And there were also other very many idols in the houses and in the villages, whereof no man could reckon the number. For the demons having taken hold upon the will of the Gazaeans, a people easily led astray, had filled with error all their city and the parts round about it. But this they suffer because of their great simplicity; wherefore when they are converted unto the holy faith they become zealous Christians.
Notes
- eight public temples, &c. See Introduction, pp. xxxi f.