his brother, Paphos, confessed to the murder (which they had not committed, but only confessed to save the lives of their fellow countrymen), the two men were summoned before Trajanus for questioning. Trajanus began their trial by mocking them, saying to them: "If you are from the nation of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, let your God come and save you from my hand, just as He saved Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah from the hand of Nebuchadnezzar." To this they replied: "Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were full-fledged righteous people, and they were worthy that a miracle should be performed for them, and Nebuchadnezzar was a worthy king, and it was fitting that a miracle be performed through him, but you are merely an unjust commoner, and one who is not fitting that a miracle be performed through him, seeing that we have been condemned to destruction by the Omnipresent [for our misdeeds]. And if you do not kill us, the Omnipresent has many other executioners. And if men do not kill us, the Omnipresent has many bears and lions in His world that can hurt us and kill us. Instead, the Holy One, Blessed be He, placed us into your hands only so that He will avenge our blood in the future." No sooner had he killed them than dispatches (tabula) arrived from Rome (others say two officials, or two emissaries, carrying orders against their execution), but since the act had already been done by the Roman soldier, he, himself, was sentenced to die by way of "cudgeling" (fustuarium), a form of capital punishment inflicted upon Roman soldiers for the highest military offenses. Some scholars ascribe these events to Lusius Quietus of Lysia, when he was appointed Roman governor of Judaea by Trajan, and who was later punished by Hadrian the emperor. The difficulty, however, with this assumption is that the primary sources all place these events in Laodicea, a place in Asia Minor and far away from the jurisdiction of Lusius Quietus. Reaction The deliverance of the city's Jewish community was received with relief by world's Jewry, and the day on which their executioner had been killed himself, the 12th day of the lunar month Adar, was transcribed in the Jewish record books and in the Scroll of Fasting as a day of public celebration, and one whereon it was forbidden for Jews to fast. Later, the day of celebration