Theodotus, Theodote and Companions

The Holy Martyrs Theodotus, Theodote, Golindouch, Diomedes, Eulampius and Asclepiades

Martyr · d. c. 108, under Trajan

Commemorated 3 July — Martyrdom under Trajan, after the death of Hyacinth the Cubicularius

A company of six martyrs — Theodotus, the woman Theodote, Golindouch, Diomedes, Eulampius and Asclepiades — arrested in the persecution of Trajan and shut up in the same prison as Hyacinth the Cubicularius, whose steadfastness under his slow death by starvation confirmed them in the faith. After Hyacinth died they were brought out to the temple and ordered to eat of the sacrifices; they refused, denounced the worship of idols aloud, were hung upon wooden frames and had their flesh torn away, and were then beheaded. The Christians buried them with honour on the spot where they suffered. They are commemorated with Hyacinth on July 3.

The six

The company is known only from the synaxarion, and the record is thin: no passio survives, no city is named, and the names themselves vary between the books. Golindouch appears as Δολινδούχ or Γολινδούχ — a Persian name, borne also by the far better-attested Persian convert and confessor Golindouch-Maria of the sixth century, with whom she has nothing else in common. Asclepiades appears in the Slavonic books as Asclepiodotus, and Eulampius as Eulampides. Theodote is the one woman named in the group and stands second in every list, immediately after Theodotus; whether they were husband and wife, brother and sister, or unrelated namesakes the sources do not say, though the shared name and the fact that the metrical synaxarion gives them a single joint couplet while every other member has one of his own points to their having been taken and tried together.

In the prison of Hyacinth

The synaxarion places their arrest under Trajan (98–117), and this is the one circumstance that gives the group its shape. They were imprisoned in the same place as the young chamberlain Hyacinth, who was at that moment being starved to death for refusing to eat food offered to idols. The notice is explicit that they were strengthened in the faith of Christ by him — that the example of his patience, sustained for weeks in front of them, is what carried them to their own confession. Their martyrdom is thus told as an appendix to his: it is only after Hyacinth has died that the authorities turn to them.

Trial and death

They were led from the prison to the temple and set before the sacrificial meats, on the same terms that had killed Hyacinth: eat, and live. They not only refused the food but rebuked the religion of the idols openly and with boldness. They were then hung on wooden frames and scraped, their flesh torn away; taken down, they were beheaded. The Christians of the place recovered the bodies and buried them with honour at the site of the execution.

The metrical synaxarion, which is often the only witness to the manner of an individual death in a company, preserves a distinct couplet for each of them, and one of these preserves a detail the prose notice omits:

On Theodotus and Theodote — "To Theodotus and Theodote, beheaded, God the God of gods gives worthy crowns."
On Golindouch — "For God, who stretched out the vault of heaven like a hide, Golindouch stretches out her neck to the sword."
On Diomedes — "From his neck-bones Diomedes poured out blood as a libation to the Lord — he, the truceless enemy of demons." (The couplet turns on his name: Διομήδης / ἄσπονδος, "without libation, implacable.")
On Eulampius — "Why, O executioner, dost thou say 'bend the head' to Eulampius, when the sword bends every limb of him?"
On Asclepiades — "Asclepiades went down into the sea, seeking to find the goodly pearl."

The last of these is the one real difficulty. It reads most naturally as drowning — that Asclepiades was cast into the sea rather than beheaded with the others — and the "goodly pearl" is the parable of Matthew 13:45–46 read through the manner of his death. The prose notice makes no such distinction, and the metrical couplets are frequently allegorical rather than documentary; the possibility that a real variant tradition lies behind it is noted here and not resolved.

Feast and commemoration

July 3 (church date; New Calendar civil July 3, Old Calendar civil July 16), with Hyacinth the Cubicularius, whose service carries the day. The company has no proper hymnography of its own: the Menaion appoints nothing for them, and they are named only in the synaxarion reading at Orthros and in the dismissal. Greek usage keeps all six; Russian usage keeps four of them, without Theodotus and Theodote.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4

Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received the crowns of incorruption from Thee our God; for possessing Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and broke the feeble insolence of demons. By their supplications, O Christ our God, save our souls.

Iconography

The company has no fixed iconographic type and is very rarely painted apart from the menologion cycles for July, where a group of martyrs — a woman among them, which is the only distinguishing mark — stands behind or beside the figure of Hyacinth for the third day of the month. Where they are shown at all they wear the ordinary lay dress of martyrs, with crosses in their right hands; Theodote is veiled in the maphorion. No pre-1900 image of the group has been located that can be identified with certainty as theirs rather than as a generic company of martyrs, and none is stored here.

Disputed questions

How many, and which? The Greek books commemorate six: Theodotus, Theodote, Golindouch, Diomedes, Eulampius and Asclepiades. The Slavonic books commemorate only four — Diomedes, Eulampius, Asclepiodotus and the martyr Golindouch — and attach them directly to Hyacinth's notice as "those with him" rather than granting them a separate memory; Theodotus and Theodote are absent from the Russian calendar for this day. The OCA's rendering of the day preserves the four-name Slavonic list. This entry follows the fuller Greek list and records the divergence.
July 3 or July 4? A probable doublet. The Slavonic calendar, which drops Theodotus and Theodote from this day, enters "мчч. Феодота и Феодотии (108)" on July 4 — the same two names, the same year, the same persecution. They are almost certainly the same pair, kept on July 3 by the Greek books as part of Hyacinth's company and on July 4 by the Slavonic books on their own. This repository accordingly carries them in two places: here, within the Greek six, and at Theodotus and Theodota of Caesarea (July 4). The duplication is deliberate only in the sense that it reflects a real divergence between the calendars; it is flagged for the editors to resolve, and neither entry should be read as asserting two distinct pairs of martyrs.
A separate memory or an appendix to Hyacinth's? The Greek synaxarion of Constantinople gives them their own entry under Τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ, which is why they are given a file of their own here; the Slavonic tradition treats them as Hyacinth's companions and nothing more. Both readings are defensible and the difference is one of liturgical bookkeeping rather than of fact.
Golindouch. Not to be confused with the Persian Golindouch, in baptism Mary (July 12), a Zoroastrian noblewoman converted under Chosroes I who suffered long imprisonment and died about 591. The two share a rare Persian name and nothing else — a different century, a different empire, and a different manner of death.
Diomedes. Not to be confused with the unmercenary physician Diomedes of Tarsus (August 16), nor with the Diomedes whose memory certain synaxaria repeat, together with Hyacinth's, on June 3 — a redundant duplication of this same day noted as such by the Greek synaxaristes.