Eustochius, Gaius and their Companions of Ancyra
The Holy Martyrs Eustochius the Presbyter, Gaius, Probus, Lollius and Urban, who suffered at Ancyra
Martyr · Priest · d. c. 305–311, at Ancyra in Galatia
Commemorated 23 June — Beheading at Ancyra under the governor Agrippinus
A converted pagan priest and the household of his own kinsman, put to death at Ancyra in Galatia in the last of the great persecutions. Eustochius had served the idols; watching the Christians die, and seeing the wonders worked at their martyrdoms, he came over to the faith, was baptised by Eudoxius, bishop of Antioch, and was ordained presbyter. Preaching afterwards at Lystra in Lycaonia, he brought his nephew Gaius and Gaius's whole household to Christ — among them Probus, Lollius and Urban. Denounced and arrested, they were sent under guard to the governor Agrippinus at Ancyra, tortured together without distinction of age or sex, and at last beheaded. Their memory is kept on June 23, the day of the martyr Agrippina, and the synaxarion notice is all that survives of them.
The pagan priest converted
Eustochius belonged to the sacrificing priesthood of the old religion — the class the persecuting edicts were designed to protect, and the class in the best position to see what the persecution actually produced. The synaxarion says simply that he watched the constancy of the Christian martyrs and the miracles worked in their sufferings, and that this, and not any argument, converted him. The motif is a commonplace of the acts of the Diocletianic persecution, but it corresponds to something the persecutors themselves complained of: public executions intended to terrify were producing converts among the spectators.
He went to Antioch and was baptised by the bishop Eudoxius, and was in time ordained to the priesthood of the Church he had once served against.
Lystra: the household of Gaius
His ministry took him to Lystra in Lycaonia — the town where Paul and Barnabas had once been taken for Hermes and Zeus, and where Paul was stoned (Acts 14). There he preached to his own kin. His nephew Gaius received the faith and with him his entire household; the three of that household whom the synaxarion names are Probus, Lollius and Urban. The notice specifies that the household included women and children, which is what a household conversion in a provincial town would mean, and it is on this that the particular pathos of their passion turns.
Arrest, torture and beheading at Ancyra
They were denounced to the imperial authorities. Eustochius was seized first and examined, and would not be moved; Gaius and his people were arrested with him. The whole company was sent under escort to Ancyra, the metropolis of Galatia, and brought before the governor Agrippinus.
There they were tortured — the notice is emphatic that no one was spared, neither the women nor the children — and no one of them denied Christ. They were sentenced together and beheaded. The date is placed in the persecution "under Maximian," which in the Byzantine day-books covers the whole complex of edicts from 303 onward; a date about 305–311 under Maximinus Daza, who governed the eastern dioceses including Galatia and pressed the persecution hardest after 306, is the likeliest setting.
Feast and commemoration
June 23 (church date; New Calendar civil June 23, Old Calendar civil July 6). The company is carried in the Greek, Slavic and Antiochian synaxaria alike, always on this day and always in second place after the martyr Agrippina. They are served with the common of several martyrs; no proper office is transmitted.
The coincidence that these martyrs suffered under a governor named Agrippinus and are commemorated on the day of the martyr Agrippina has sometimes been remarked; it is a coincidence and nothing more, but it may explain why the two notices travelled together through the manuscript tradition.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received the crown of incorruption from thee our God; for possessing thy strength they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their prayers, O Christ God, save our souls.
Kontakion — Tone 2
A priest of idols didst thou become a priest of Christ, O wise Eustochius, taught by the blood of the martyrs; and thou didst bring to the Lord thy kinsman with all his house, a whole company for an offering. Wherefore, having contended together and been beheaded together, ye stand together before the throne, entreating mercy for us all.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The company is not given an individual iconography; where it is painted at all, it is in the menologion cycles of the fixed year, as a group scene of beheading under June 23, usually placed beside or beneath the martyrdom of Agrippina. Eustochius is distinguished in such scenes as the presbyter: white-haired, in the phelonion, with the Gospel or a cross, standing at the head of the group; Gaius and the rest are shown as laymen in tunic and mantle, with the women veiled and the children small at their parents' side, all bearing the martyr's cross. No pre-1900 image of them alone has been located.
Disputed questions
Which Maximian. The Greek and Slavic notices say "the emperor Maximian (286–310)," a formula that conflates Maximian Herculius, Galerius Maximianus and Maximinus Daza. Galatia in the years of the persecution lay under Galerius and then Maximinus Daza, and the governor Agrippinus belongs to that administration; Maximian Herculius, who ruled in the West, cannot be meant.
Lollius or Lollia. The OCA day-list titles the company "Eustochius, Gaius, Probus, Lollius and Urban," but its own text of the life gives the name in the feminine form Lollia, among those converted in the household of Gaius. The Greek transmission has Λόλλιος. A household conversion including women makes either reading possible, and the variation should be recorded rather than resolved.
Eudoxius of Antioch. The bishop who baptised Eustochius is named Eudoxius of Antioch. No bishop of that name is known at Antioch before the fourth-century Arian Eudoxius (bishop 358–360, afterwards of Constantinople), who is emphatically not a saint and cannot be meant; the name in the passion is therefore either a different and unrecorded Eudoxius, or a corruption. It is one of several signs that the notice reached the synaxarion at some distance from the events.
The company. They have no independent cultus and no separate feasts: they are commemorated as a single company, and are entered here as one file accordingly.