Symeon and Usthazanes before King Sapor

In the course of time the Christians grew in number, began to form churches, and appointed priests and deacons. Then the Magi, a priestly tribe who from the beginning, generation after generation, had guarded the Persian religion, became deeply angered against them. The Jews, who out of envy are in some way naturally opposed to the Christian religion, were offended too. So they brought accusations before Sapor, the reigning king, against Symeon, who was then archbishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, royal cities of Persia. They charged him with being a friend of the Caesar of the Romans and passing on the affairs of the Persians to him. Sapor believed these accusations. At first he crushed the Christians with heavy taxes, although he knew that most of them had chosen poverty of their own free will. He put cruel men in charge of collecting them, hoping that through lack of necessities and the brutality of the collectors the Christians might be forced to renounce their religion; for this was his aim. Afterward, however, he commanded that the priests and those who led the worship of God be put to the sword. The churches were torn down, their sacred vessels were placed in the treasury, and Symeon was arrested as a traitor to the kingdom and to the religion of the Persians. So the Magi, with the help of the Jews, quickly destroyed the houses of prayer. [a]

When Symeon was arrested, he was bound in chains and brought before the king. There the man showed his excellence and courage. When Sapor ordered him to be led away to torture, he did not fear and would not bow down to the ground. The king, greatly angered, demanded to know why he did not bow down as he had done before. Symeon replied, “Before, I was not being led away in chains to make me renounce the truth of God, and so I did not then object to paying the usual respect to royalty. But now it would not be right for me to do so, for I stand here in defense of godliness and of our belief.” When he had finished speaking, the king commanded him to worship the sun, promising him gifts and honor if he did, but threatening, if he refused, to destroy him and the whole body of Christians. When the king found that he could neither frighten him with threats nor soften him with promises, and that Symeon stood firm and refused to worship the sun or to betray his religion, he ordered him to be kept in chains for a while, thinking perhaps that he would change his mind.

As Symeon was being taken to prison, Usthazanes, an aged eunuch who had brought Sapor up and was the superintendent of the palace, happened to be sitting at the palace gates, and he stood up to do him reverence. Symeon forbade him reproachfully in a loud and haughty voice, turned his face away, and passed by; for the eunuch had once been a Christian but had recently given in to authority and worshiped the sun. This so moved the eunuch that he wept aloud, took off the white garment he wore, and dressed himself in black like a mourner. Then he sat down in front of the palace, crying and groaning and saying, “Woe is me! What must be waiting for me, since I have denied God! And because of this Symeon, once my close friend, does not think me worthy to be spoken to, but turns away and hurries past me.” When Sapor heard what had happened, he called the eunuch to him, asked the cause of his grief, and asked whether some disaster had struck his family. Usthazanes answered, “O king, nothing has happened to my family. But I would rather have suffered any other trouble whatever than the one that has come upon me, and it would have been easy to bear. Now I mourn because I am alive when I ought to have died long ago, and yet I still see the sun, which I professed to worship, not willingly, but to please you. So on both counts it is just that I should die, for I have been a betrayer of Christ and a deceiver of you.” Then he swore by the Maker of heaven and earth that he would never turn from his convictions. Sapor, astonished at the eunuch’s remarkable change, was still more enraged against the Christians, as though they had brought it about by sorcery. Still, he spared the old man, and tried with all his strength, by turns gentle and harsh, to bring him over to his own views. But when he found his efforts were useless, and that Usthazanes kept declaring that he would never be so foolish as to worship the creature instead of the Creator, he flew into a rage and ordered the eunuch’s head to be cut off with a sword.

When the executioners came forward to do their work, Usthazanes asked them to wait a little so that he might send a message to the king. He called one of the most faithful eunuchs and told him to say to Sapor: “From my youth until now, O king, I have been loyal to your house, and I have served your father and you with fitting care. I need no witnesses to confirm what I say; these facts are well known. For all the things in which I have gladly served you at various times, grant me this reward. Do not let those who do not know the circumstances imagine that I have brought this punishment on myself by disloyalty to the kingdom or by committing some other crime. Instead, let a herald publish and proclaim far and wide that Usthazanes loses his head not for any wrongdoing he ever committed in the palace, but for being a Christian and for refusing to obey the king by denying his own God.” The eunuch delivered this message, and Sapor, as Usthazanes had asked, ordered a herald to make the proclamation he wanted. For the king imagined that others would easily be frightened away from Christianity when they reflected that a man who had sacrificed his aged foster-father and valued household servant would certainly spare no other Christian. Usthazanes, however, believed that just as by his cowardice in agreeing to worship the sun he had made many Christians afraid, so now, by the careful proclamation of the reason for his suffering, many might be strengthened when they learned that he died for the sake of religion, and so might become imitators of his courage.