Straton, Philip, Eutychian and Cyprian of Nicomedia
The Holy Martyrs Straton, Philip, Eutychian and Cyprian, who suffered at Nicomedia
Martyr · d. c. 303, at Nicomedia
Commemorated 17 August — Burned at Nicomedia after preaching in the circus
Four Christians of Nicomedia — Straton, Philip, Eutychian and Cyprian — who made the city's circus their pulpit. Going in among the crowds gathered for the games, they preached Christ where the pagan festival was thickest, argued the emptiness of the idols to men who had come for entertainment, and converted so many that the attendance at the spectacles visibly fell away. It was that fall in the takings, not a denunciation, that brought them before the governor. Refusing to renounce Christ, they were thrown to wild beasts which would not touch them, tortured, and at last burned alive. Their memory is kept on August 17.
Preachers in the circus
The company belongs to Nicomedia in Bithynia — from 286 the eastern capital of the empire, the residence of Diocletian, and consequently the scene of some of the most crowded martyrologies in the calendar. The passion transmitted in the synaxaria is short and, in its central conceit, unusual enough to be worth stating plainly: these four did not suffer for refusing to attend the public rites, nor for being discovered at a secret liturgy. They suffered for evangelising a stadium.
The Greek notice says that they came repeatedly to the hippodrome — the theatron or circus of the city, the great public gathering-place where the races and beast-shows were held, and which was inseparable from the pagan cult that framed them. There they spoke openly among the spectators, teaching them to abandon the worship of idols and to turn to Christ. The synaxarion is careful about the effect: they persuaded many, and the consequence was measurable. The crowds thinned. The seats emptied. Whatever the local magistrates thought of the theology, they could see the receipts.
Arrest and martyrdom
The governor summoned them — the tradition does not preserve his name — and put to them the ordinary question. They answered it plainly, confessing themselves Christians and declining to sacrifice, and, according to the notice, used the tribunal as they had used the circus, arguing the case for Christ before the judge.
They were condemned to the beasts, and were exposed in the same arena in which they had preached. The animals would not attack them. The company was then tortured — the sources do not specify the torments — and finally burned, receiving the crown together. The tradition places their contest in the great persecution begun at Nicomedia in 303, though the year is not fixed by the passion itself and some notices set them earlier in the third century.
Feast and commemoration
August 17 (church date; New Calendar civil August 17, Old Calendar civil August 30), within the afterfeast of the Dormition of the Theotokos. The four are commemorated together in the Greek, Slavonic, Antiochian and OCA calendars on this day, following Myron of Cyzicus. They have no proper service; they are commemorated at the sixth ode of the canon and in the synaxarion reading, and any liturgical celebration uses the common of several martyrs.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of several 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 intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Kontakion — Tone 2
You made of the place of vanity a place of preaching, O wise ones, and turned the spectators of the games into beholders of Christ; wherefore, having been perfected by fire, Straton, Philip, Eutychian and Cyprian, you cease not to intercede for us all.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The four are shown together, as the calendar cycles show all companies: standing in a row, in the tunic and mantle of laymen, each holding the cross of confession, and distinguished only by age and beard — one young and beardless, the others in varying maturity. Where the passion is depicted rather than the persons, the scene chosen is the fire, the four standing upright within the flames with hands raised in prayer; the arena with the beasts turning aside is occasionally given instead. No pre-1900 image of the company alone has been located for this collection.
Disputed questions
- The roll of names. The four names are stable in the Greek and Slavonic synaxaria — Στράτων, Φίλιππος, Εὐτυχιανός, Κυπριανός — but Straton appears in some manuscripts and in a number of derivative lists as Stratonicus, and Cyprian is occasionally displaced by Cyprianus the Elder, drawing an unwarranted connection with the great Cyprian of Carthage or with Cyprian of Antioch (October 2). Neither identification has any support; these are four otherwise unknown laymen of Bithynia.
- The date. The Nicomedian setting invites, and the calendars generally accept, attribution to the Diocletianic persecution of 303–311; but the passion names no emperor, and an earlier third-century date cannot be excluded. The entry follows the common attribution while noting that it is inference.
- Nothing further is known. No relics, no shrine, no local cultus outside the calendar entry, and no proper hymnography have come down. The honest limit of the record is the single synaxarion notice summarised above; nothing is added here to fill it out.