The news of his death flew with wonderful rapidity through the oasis and
the fishing-town, and far and wide to the caves of the anchorites, and
even to the huts of the Amalekite shepherds. The procession that
followed him to his last resting-place stretched to an invisible
distance; in front of all walked Agapitus with the elders and deacons,
and behind them Petrus with his wife and family, to which Sirona now
belonged. Polykarp, who was now recovering, laid a palm-branch in token
of reconcilement on his grave, which was visited as a sacred spot by the
many whose needs he had alleviated in secret, and before long by all the
penitents from far and wide.

Petrus erected a monument over his grave, on which Polykarp incised the
words which Paulus' trembling fingers had traced just before his death
with a piece of charcoal on the wall of his cave:

"Pray for me, a miserable man--for I was a man."