Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| The time has indeed come to tell the story of that great and far-famed spectacle, the martyrdom of those who were perfected alongside Pamphilus, a name thrice longed for by me. They were twelve in all, and so were counted worthy of a grace, and of a number, like those of the prophets or even of the apostles.
2| Their leader, and the only one of them honored with the rank of presbyter in the church at Caesarea, was Pamphilus, a man who throughout his whole life had excelled in every virtue: in renunciation and contempt of worldly life, in sharing his property with those in need, in disregard for worldly hopes, in a philosopher's way of living and in ascetic discipline. Above all, he stood out beyond everyone of our time for his wholehearted devotion to the divine oracles, for his tireless industry in whatever he undertook, and for the assistance he gave to his own relatives and to all who came near him.
3| The rest of his virtuous achievements, which would need a longer account, we have already set down earlier in three books, in a separate work devoted to his life. To those books we refer anyone who is eager to know about these things as well; for now, let us keep to the sequence of the martyrs.
4| Second after Pamphilus to enter the contest came Valens, a deacon of the church at Aelia, honored with a venerable gray head, an old man of most dignified appearance and learned in the divine scriptures if anyone ever was. He had stored up in his heart so much of them by memory that he had no need to read from a book, but could recite from memory whatever passage of scripture he chose to take up.
5| Third among them was Paul, from the city of Jamnia, a man of the most fervent zeal and burning in spirit, who before his martyrdom had fought the contest of confession by enduring branding irons. When these men had spent two full years in prison, the occasion for their martyrdom came with the arrival, once again, of brothers from Egypt, who were perfected together with them.
6| These had accompanied the confessors in Cilicia all the way to the mines there, and were returning home. At the very entrance of the gates of Caesarea they, like the others, were questioned by the guards, who were men of a barbarous character, about who they were and where they had come from. They concealed nothing of the truth, and were seized like criminals caught in the act. There were five of them in
7| They were brought before the tyrant, and when they spoke boldly before him as well, they were at once shut up in prison. On the following day, the sixteenth of the month Peritius, which in the Roman reckoning is the fourteenth day before the Kalends of March, they were by order brought before the judge, together with Pamphilus and his companions whom we have already described.
8| First he put to the test the unconquerable resolve of the Egyptians with tortures of every sort and with contrivances of strange and varied machines. When he had exercised the spokesman of them all in these ordeals, he asked him first of all who he was. Then, instead of his proper name, he heard a prophet's name. For they did this: in place of the names their fathers had given them, which, as it happened, were idolatrous, they had taken new names for themselves. So you would have heard them calling themselves Elijah and Jeremiah, Isaiah and Samuel and Daniel, and showing themselves to be the Jew in secret, the true and genuine Israel of God, not only by their deeds but by the very names they bore in the proper sense. When Firmilian, then, heard some such name from the martyr, without stopping to consider the meaning of the word, he asked him next what his country was.
9| He gave a second answer in harmony with the first, saying that Jerusalem was his country. He meant, of course, the city of which Paul says, "But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother," and, "You have come to Mount Zion, and to a city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem."
10| That was the city he had in mind. But the judge, his thoughts cast down to the ground and the earth, inquired closely what this city was and where on earth it lay, and then applied tortures to make him confess the truth. The martyr, though his hands were twisted behind his back and his feet were crushed in some strange devices, insisted that he had spoken the truth.
11| Then, when the judge asked again and again what the city was that he spoke of and where it lay, he said that this was the homeland of the godly alone, that no others had any share in it but they alone, and that it lay toward the very East, toward the rising sun.
12| Once more he was pursuing his own meaning in these words, paying no heed whatever to the men around him who were tormenting him with tortures, but seeming, as if he had neither flesh nor body, not even to feel the pains. The judge, at a loss, writhed with impatience, thinking that the Christians must surely be founding a city hostile and at war with the Romans, and he spent a long time searching for it and inquiring into the region said to lie in the East.
13| When the governor had flayed the young man at length with scourges and punished him with every kind of torture, and saw that his resolve remained unchanged from what he had said earlier, he pronounced against him the capital sentence of beheading. Such was the drama that played out in his case. The rest he likewise put through similar contests, and dispatched them in the same manner.
14| Then, worn out, and realizing that he was punishing these men in vain, once he had taken his fill of his appetite he turned to Pamphilus and his companions. He was told that they had already shown, even under torture, an unshakable eagerness for the faith. He asked whether even now they would obey, and received from each of them only the last utterance of their confession in martyrdom; and he inflicted on them the same punishment as on the others.
15| When these things had been carried through, a youth who belonged to the household service of Pamphilus, trained in the genuine upbringing and education of so great a man, learned of the sentence against his master. Out of the crowd he cried aloud, asking that the bodies be given over for burial in the earth.
16| But the governor, who was no human being but a beast, and something wilder than a beast, showed no pardon to the youth's age. As soon as he asked him and learned only that he confessed himself a Christian, he swelled with rage as though struck by some arrow, and ordered the torturers to apply all their strength to him.
17| When he saw the youth refuse to sacrifice, though urged to, he ordered that he be raked continuously, no longer as if it were human flesh but stone or wood or some other lifeless thing, down to the very bones and the entrails deep in their hidden recesses. When this had continued for a long time he concluded that his effort was in vain, since the youth's body, worn away by the tortures, was speechless and senseless and all but wholly lifeless.
18| Still keeping up his pitiless and inhuman temper, he immediately gave orders that the youth, just as he was, be handed over to a slow fire. So this young man, who came forward last to the contest, was released from the body before the death of his master according to the flesh, while those who had been busy with the earlier victims were still delaying.
19| One could see Porphyrius like a victor crowned in the sacred games, having won the all-in contest: his body covered in dust, his face radiant, walking to his death with a bold and exultant spirit after all he had endured, truly filled with the divine Spirit. He was clothed only in the philosopher's garb, the cloak about him worn like a tunic, and with sober mind he gave his instructions and signals to his friends about what he wished. Even on the scaffold he kept his face radiant. And when the pyre was kindled all around him from a long way off, he seized the flame with his mouth, first from this side, then from that, and held out most nobly in silence to his last breath, uttering only one cry, which he let go the moment the flame caught him, calling on Jesus, the Son of God, as his helper. Such was the contest of Porphyrius.
20| Seleucus, a confessor from the army, who brought Pamphilus the news of Porphyrius' end, as the servant of so great an announcement was immediately deemed worthy of sharing their company. For as soon as he had reported Porphyrius' death and kissed one of the martyrs in greeting, some soldiers laid hold of him and led him to the governor. The governor, as though hurrying him to become a companion of the earlier man on the journey to the heavens, at once ordered him punished by beheading.
21| He was from the land of the Cappadocians, of the select youth in military service, and had attained no small honor among Roman ranks. For in age and bodily strength, in stature and might, he surpassed his fellow soldiers by far, so that his appearance was famous among all, and his whole form was admirable for its size and beauty.
22| At the beginning of the persecution he distinguished himself in the confessor's contests by enduring scourging. After leaving the army he made himself a zealous follower of those who practice godliness, and showed himself to be a guardian and helper, like a father and protector, of desolate orphans and unprotected widows, and of those cast aside in poverty and sickness. For this reason he was fittingly judged worthy of the unexpected calling of martyrdom by God, who delights more in such deeds than in sacrifices of smoke and blood.
23| This man, the tenth athlete in addition to those already described, was perfected on one and the same day, on which, it seems, a very great gate was opened, worthy of the man, by the martyrdom of Pamphilus, so that for him and for others together the passage into the kingdom of the heavens became easy.
24| Close on the heels of Seleucus came Theodulus, a grave and devout elder, a member of the governor's household. Firmilian had honored him above everyone else in the house, partly for his age, since he was a father of three generations, and partly for the goodwill and utterly faithful conscience he had always kept toward them. He did the same thing Seleucus had done, was brought before his master, and provoked him even more than those before him; he was handed over to the cross and accepted the same martyrdom as the Savior's passion.
25| After these, one was still lacking to fill out the number of twelve among the martyrs we have described, and Julian arrived to complete it. He had just come back from a journey and had not yet entered the city when the news reached him on the road; at once, just as he was, he hurried off to see the martyrs. When he saw the bodies of the saints lying on the ground, he was filled with joy, embraced each one, and kissed them all.
26| As he was doing this, the ministers of slaughter seized him in turn and brought him before Firmilian. True to form, Firmilian handed this man too over to a slow fire. So Julian also, leaping and bounding for joy and giving abundant thanks in a loud voice to the Lord, who had deemed him worthy of such things, was counted worthy of the martyrs' crown.
27| By birth he was a Cappadocian; in character he was most devout, most faithful and most sincere, earnest in every other way, and breathing forth the Holy Spirit himself. That was the company of those who were judged worthy to enter into martyrdom together with Pamphilus.
28| On the impious governor's order, their bodies, sacred and truly holy, were left out for four days, and for as many nights, as food for the flesh-eating creatures. But, wonderful to tell, nothing came near them, neither beast nor bird nor dog. Then, by the dispensation of God's providence, they were taken up unharmed, received the funeral rites that were their due, and were given the customary burial.
29| While the things done to these men were still on everyone's lips, Adrian and Eubulus came to Caesarea from the country called Manganaea, to visit the remaining confessors. At the gate they too were questioned about why they had come; then, once they had confessed the truth, they were brought before Firmilian. He, just as before, put nothing off: after a great many tortures, which he had applied to their sides, he condemned them to serve as food for wild beasts.
30| Two days later, on the fifth day of the month Dystrus, the third day before the Nones of March, which was the birthday of the so-called Fortune of the people of Caesarea, Adrian was thrown to a lion, then slaughtered with the sword, and so was made perfect. Eubulus followed after one day more, on the Nones of March itself, which would be the seventh of Dystrus. The judge pleaded with him at length to sacrifice and so obtain what they call freedom, but he preferred a glorious death for the sake of piety to this passing life; after the beasts he too was made a sacrifice like the one before him, and as the last of the martyrs at Caesarea he set the seal on their contests.
31| It is also worth recording at this point in the account that before long heavenly providence pursued the impious rulers along with the tyrants themselves. The very man who had raged so drunkenly against the martyrs of Christ, Firmilian himself, suffered the ultimate penalty in company with the others, and by the sword ended his life. Such, then, were the martyrdoms carried out at Caesarea during the whole period of the persecution.
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