The plot outlined the story of the early Christian martyrs with a compendium of horrors guaranteed to jolt audiences into an awareness of terrible suffering for the sake of Christianity. Contained maulings at the Colosseum, crucifixions, beheadings, savage hackings and burnings at the stake, burnings in the limepit, the spectacle of human torches in Nero's garden. Overall "soul stirring stories of the martyrs, illustrated by the most beautiful living pictures by kinematograph and limelight and never before witnessed in this or any other country.