1. On the fourteenth day of the following month Appellæus, [2673] the nineteenth before the Kalends of January, certain persons from Egypt were again seized by those who examined people passing the gates. They had been sent to minister to the confessors in Cilicia. They received the same sentence as those whom they had gone to help, being mutilated in their eyes and feet. Three of them exhibited in Ascalon, where they were imprisoned, marvelous bravery in the endurance of various kinds of martyrdom. One of them named Ares was condemned to the flames, and the others, called Probus [2674] and Elias, were beheaded. 2. On the eleventh day of the month Audynæus, [2675] which is the third before the Ides of January, in the same city of Cæsarea, Peter an ascetic, also called Apselamus, [2676] from the village of Anea, [2677] on the borders of Eleutheropolis, like purest gold, gave noble proof by fire of his faith in the Christ of God. Though the judge and those around him besought him many times to have compassion on himself, and to spare his own youth and bloom, he disregarded them, preferring hope in the God of the universe to all things, even to life itself. A certain Asclepius, supposed to be [2678] a bishop of the sect of Marcion, possessed as he thought with zeal for religion, but "not according to knowledge," [2679] ended his life on one and the same funeral pyre. These things took place in this manner. Footnotes: [2673] i.e. Dec. 14, 308 (see the tables on p. 403, below). [2674] The majority of the codices read Promos, but as Valesius remarks, such a proper name is quite unknown in Greek, and the form probably arose from a confusion of b and m, which in ancient mss. were written alike. Two of our existing codices read Probos, and this has been adopted by Zimmermann and Heinichen, whom I have followed in the text. [2675] i.e. Jan. 11, 309. [2676] In the Syriac version "Absalom." [2677] Of this village we know nothing, but Eleutheropolis (originally Bethozabris) was an important place lying some forty miles southwest of Jerusalem. [2678] einai dokon. Eusebius did not wish to admit that he was a bishop in a true sense. [2679] Romans 10:2. |
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