Martyrs at Ascalon and Caesarea

On the fourteenth day of the following month, Apellaeus, December 14 by the Roman reckoning, some people from Egypt were again seized by those who were questioning people passing through the gates. They had been sent to serve the confessors in Cilicia. They received the same sentence as those they had gone to help, and were maimed in their eyes and feet. Three of them, at Ascalon, where they were imprisoned, showed marvelous courage in enduring different kinds of martyrdom. One of them, named Ares, was condemned to the flames, and the others, called Probus and Elias, were beheaded. [a] On the eleventh day of the month Audynaeus, January 11 by the Roman reckoning, in the same city of Caesarea, Peter, an ascetic, also called Apselamus, from the village of Anea on the borders of Eleutheropolis, like the purest gold, gave noble proof by fire of his faith in the Christ of God. The judge and those around him begged him many times to have pity on himself and spare his youth and the bloom of his life, but he paid no attention to them, preferring hope in the God of the universe to everything, even to life itself. A certain Asclepius, thought to be a bishop of the sect of Marcion, possessed, as he believed, by zeal for godliness, but “not according to knowledge,” ended his life on one and the same pyre. These things took place in this way. [b]