Eutychian and Strategius
The Holy Martyrs Eutychian the Soldier and Strategius, who were perfected by fire
Martyr
Commemorated 19 August — Martyrdom by fire; no place, persecutor or year is transmitted
Eutychian and Strategius are two martyrs of whom the Greek synaxarion for August 19 has kept four things and nothing else: their names, that Eutychian was a soldier, that they were perfected by fire, and two couplets of verse composed on the puns their names make. Neither the persecution, nor the place, nor the year, nor the manner of their arrest has come down. They are recorded here at the length the record allows, which is short, and no life is constructed for them.
The whole surviving notice is a single line in the synaxarion of Constantinople as the Greek Menaion prints it for the nineteenth of August: on the same day, the memory of the holy martyrs Eutychian the soldier and Strategius, who were perfected by fire. The formula διὰ πυρὸς τελειωθέντων — "perfected through fire" — is the synaxaria's standard phrase for death by burning, and τελειωθέντων, "brought to completion," is the word the Church prefers for a martyr's death over any word for killing.
That Eutychian is called ὁ στρατιώτης, "the soldier," locates him, if anywhere, among the military martyrs of the persecutions, and his memory's placing on the day of Andrew Stratelates and his two and a half thousand soldiers may be why it survived at all: a soldier-martyr burnt to death was drawn into the wake of the great soldier-martyr of the day. Whether the two men suffered together, or were joined only by the calendar, the notice does not say — though the shared manner of death, and the single notice covering both, suggest a single occasion.
What the tradition did with them instead of a biography is what the Byzantine calendar always did when it had nothing but a name: it made verse. Both couplets printed with the notice are built on the meaning of the martyr's own name, and they are the only characterisation these two saints have.
Of Eutychian, whose name is built on εὐτυχία, good fortune: Eutychian is burned, having judged the burning a great piece of good fortune, and the suffering a small thing. The poet has simply taken the man's name and made his death agree with it. To be "Eutychian" is to be lucky; the martyr's luck is the fire.
Of Strategius, whose name is built on στρατηγός, a general: Strategius, bearing Christ as his weapon, out-generalled even the pyre when it was raised against him. Again the name does the work — κατεστρατήγει, "he out-generalled," is the verb formed from strategos — and the conceit is the one that runs through the whole day's office: the soldier's real weapon is not the sword, and his real victory is won at the place where he is killed.
Feast and commemoration
August 19 (church date; New Calendar civil August 19, Old Calendar civil September 1), within the afterfeast of the Dormition. The commemoration is carried by the Greek synaxarion appended to the office of Andrew Stratelates; the Slavonic and OCA calendars for the day do not list it, and neither do the Antiochian books. There is no proper service, no reading, and no rank beyond the bare synaxarion memory.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of martyrs)
Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from thee our God; for possessing thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their supplications, O Christ our God, save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
There is no iconographic type for these martyrs, and no image of them is known. Were they painted, the conventions would be the ordinary ones for their categories: Eutychian as a young soldier-martyr in tunic, cloak and military boots, holding the cross rather than a weapon, with the flames beneath him where the manner of death is shown; Strategius as a layman-martyr in tunic and mantle with the cross. No pre-1900 image has been identified, and none is stored.
Disputed questions
- Nothing is dated. No century is assigned to these martyrs in this corpus, because none is transmitted; they are indexed among the saints whose era the sources do not fix. Death by fire and a military rank point loosely to the persecutions of the third or early fourth century, but that is inference from the type of the notice and not evidence.
- Are they one commemoration or two? The Greek notice names them in a single entry with a single verb, which is normally the sign of a joint martyrdom; but the two couplets are separate, one to each name, which is normally the sign of two separate memories gathered under one day. They are treated here as a pair, following the notice.
- The name Strategius. Strategius is also a common Byzantine personal name and appears in the martyrologies elsewhere; nothing links this Strategius to any of those namesakes, and no such link is asserted. Note that his name is a near-synonym of the stratelates of the day's principal saint, and take care not to let the two run together: Andrew Stratelates bore a rank, and Strategius bears a name.