Caesar of Dyrrhachium

Saint Caesar the Apostle (called Caesarius in other sources) is one of the Seventy Apostles of the Lord and was the first bishop of Dyrrachium, a city of Epirus, today Durrës in Albania. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 8 December, together with the apostles Sosthenes, Apollos, Cephas, Tychicus, Epaphroditus and Onesiphorus, and on 30 March in the Synaxis of some of the apostles.

According to tradition he was a man probably from Koroni in the Morea, who turned to the Christian faith in the first century. He was a disciple of the Apostle Paul and is numbered among the Seventy sent out by Christ, mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Their number is seventy or seventy-⁠two, depending on the manuscript. Tradition holds that Paul ordained him the first bishop of Dyrrachium.

The sources disagree about his end: some say he was martyred at Dyrrachium, others that he died a natural death. He was succeeded in his see by Saint Astius, an Albanian martyr to whom a church in Durrës is dedicated.

The Catholic Church commemorates him on 9 or 10 December, and the Orthodox Church on 8 December and on 30 March.