Macedonius, Busiris, Basil, Eupsychius and Other Martyrs

About the same time Macedonius, Theodulus and Tatian, Phrygians by birth, bravely endured martyrdom. The governor of the province had reopened a temple at Misos, a city of Phrygia, after it had been closed for many years. These martyrs went into it by night and destroyed the images. When other people were arrested and were about to be punished for the deed, they declared that they were the ones who had done it. They could have escaped any further punishment by offering sacrifice to idols, but the governor could not persuade them to accept release on those terms. When his persuasion failed, he mistreated them in many ways, and finally he stretched them out on a gridiron with a fire lit beneath it. While they were being burned, they said to the governor, “Amachius” (for that was his name), “if you want cooked meat, give orders for our bodies to be turned over with the other side to the fire, so that we will not taste half-cooked to you.” So these men nobly endured, and laid down their lives in the midst of their punishment. [a]

It is said that Busiris too won renown at Ancyra, a city of Galatia, by his brilliant and most courageous confession of religion. He belonged to the heresy called the Encratites. The governor of the province arrested him and meant to mistreat him for mocking the pagans. He led him out in public to the place of torture and ordered him to be hoisted up. Busiris raised both hands to his head, so as to leave his sides bare, and told the governor that it was no use for the executioners to lift him up onto the instrument of torture and then let him down again, since he was ready without all that to submit to the tortures for as long as they liked. The governor was surprised at this offer, but what followed astonished him even more. Busiris stood firm, holding up both hands and taking the blows while his sides were torn with hooks, as the governor had ordered. Right afterward he was put in prison, but he was released not long after, when the death of Julian was announced. He lived on until the reign of Theodosius, gave up his former heresy, and joined the catholic church. [b]

It is said that about this time Basil, a presbyter of the church of Ancyra, and Eupsychius, a nobleman of Caesarea in Cappadocia who had only just married and was still a bridegroom, ended their lives in martyrdom. I believe Eupsychius was condemned because of the tearing down of the temple of Fortune, which, as I have already said, roused the emperor’s anger against all the people of Caesarea. In fact, everyone who took part in that affair was condemned, some to death and others to exile. Basil had long shown great zeal in defense of the faith and had opposed the Arians in the reign of Constantius. For that reason the party of Eudoxius had forbidden him to hold public assemblies. But when Julian came to the throne, he traveled from place to place, publicly and openly urging the Christians to hold fast to their own teaching and not to defile themselves with pagan sacrifices and drink offerings. He urged them to count as nothing the honors the emperor might give them, since such honors last only a short time and lead to eternal disgrace. His zeal had already made him suspected and hated by the pagans, when one day he happened to pass by and saw them offering sacrifice. He sighed deeply and prayed aloud that no Christian might ever be allowed to fall into the same delusion. He was seized on the spot and taken to the governor of the province. Many tortures were inflicted on him, and by his courageous endurance of that agony he received the crown of martyrdom. [c] Even if these cruelties were committed against the emperor’s will, they still prove that his reign was made famous by martyrs neither undistinguished nor few. For the sake of clarity I have told all these events together, although the martyrdoms actually took place at different times.