Ariston

Saint Ariston, Martyr, is a Christian martyr with an ancient veneration, attested by the Chronograph of the year 354. He belongs to the third century.

The oldest testimony of his veneration at Rome is in the Depositio martyrum of the calendar of Philocalus of 354, which wrongly says he was buried "in Pontum", while the Hieronymian martyrology correctly places the tomb "in Portu romano", that is, at Portus near Ostia. The old sources say nothing about his life and death; only the late and legendary passion of Saint Sebastian mentions an Ariston as a friend of Saints Mark and Marcellian, killed in the persecution of Diocletian. His veneration is also seen from the name of a bishop of Ostia at the beginning of the sixth century, Aristo. In the seventh century there stood by the basilica of Saint Paul on the Via Ostiense a church dedicated, according to Francesco Lanzoni, to Saints Ariston, Christina and Victoria, mentioned in a gift of Pope Gregory the Great of 604 and in the Salzburg Itinerary. The Chronograph of 354 puts his commemoration on 13 December, the Hieronymian martyrology on 22 December, and the Roman Martyrology of the time of John Paul II on 13 December. A Russian source places him in Campania, dead around 284, together with Crescentianus, Eutychianus, Urbanus, Vitalis, Justus, Felicissimus, Felix, Marcia and Symphorosa, in the persecution of Diocletian, with a commemoration on 2 July.