Aristarchus

The holy apostle Aristarchus, one of the Seventy, was a Macedonian of Thessalonica, a companion of the holy apostle Paul in his journeys and labours, and he suffered as a martyr at Rome. He is commemorated on 4 January, 15 April and 27 September.

In the Acts of the Apostles

Tradition numbers him among the disciples whom the Lord sent to proclaim the Gospel even while He lived on earth, and his name appears several times in the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters of Paul. At Ephesus, in the riot stirred up by the silversmith Demetrius, he and another Macedonian, Gaius, were seized by the mob and taken into the theater. Later he returned with Paul from Greece to Asia. At Caesarea he boarded with the apostle a ship of Adramyttium bound for Myra in Lycia, and Saint John Chrysostom thinks he was with him also at Jerusalem and as far as Rome. In the letter to the Colossians Paul calls him his “fellow prisoner”, and in the one to Philemon his “fellow worker”.

Bishop and martyr

His life says that he became bishop of the city of Apamea in Syria. Some old lists of the Seventy name him twice, as bishop of Apamea and as bishop of Thessalonica, but it seems that one man is meant, found in the one city and the other. The same life shows that he received a martyr’s death at Rome, in the time of the emperor Nero, at the same time as Saint Paul, around the year 67.