one time he seemed like a man, and at another time he seemed like an angel." While in Iconium, Paul gave his sermons in the house of Onesiphorus (cp. 2Tim 1:16) in a series of beatitudes, which Thecla, a young noble virgin, heard from her window in an adjacent house. She listened, enraptured, without moving for days. Thecla's mother, Theocleia, and her fiancé, Thamyris, became concerned that Thecla would follow Paul's demand "that one must fear only one God and live in chastity," and they formed a mob to drag Paul to the governor, who imprisoned the apostle. Thecla bribed a guard to gain entrance to the prison, and sat at Paul's feet all night listening to his teaching and "kissing his bonds." When her family found her, both she and Paul were again brought before the governor. At her mother's request, Paul was sentenced to scourging and expulsion (cp. Acts 14:19, 2 Tim 3:11), and Thecla to be killed by being burned at the stake, so that "all the women who have been taught by this man may be afraid." Stripped naked, Thecla was put on the fire, but she was saved when God sent a miraculous storm to put out the flames. Thecla and Paul reunited outside of Iconium, where she told him, "I will cut my hair off and I shall follow you wherever you go." The two then traveled to Pisidian Antioch (cp. Acts 14:21), where a nobleman named Alexander desired Thecla and offered Paul money for her. Paul claimed not to know her, and Alexander then attempted to take Thecla by force. Thecla fought him off, assaulting him in the process, to the amusement of the townspeople. Alexander dragged her before the governor for assaulting a nobleman and, despite the protests of the city's women, Thecla was sentenced to be eaten by wild beasts. To ensure that her virtue would still be intact at her death, Queen Antonia Tryphaena took her into protective custody overnight. The next day, Thecla was tied to a fierce lioness and paraded through the city. Though some condemned her for being sacreligious, other women in the city protested the injustice of her sentence. Still, Thecla was stripped naked and thrown into an arena, where the lioness protected her from a bear and died while killing a lion that belonged to Alexander. Believing that the day in the arena would be