Epaminondas

Holy New Martyr Epaminondas was one of the thirty-⁠one Christian scouts killed at Aydin in Asia Minor on 18 June 1919. Epameinondas Anastasiadis was a member of the local committee of the scouts of Aydin.

On 14 May 1919 the Greek army entered Aydin (Aidin, in Asia Minor), and the scouts of Ionia served as messengers, guides, interpreters and stretcher-⁠bearers. A month later, when Turkish irregulars attacked, the army withdrew for three days, and in that time the population was massacred. The scouts stayed in the city to help their fellow citizens. Thirty-⁠one of them, together with their local commissioner and their leaders, were arrested and shut in the basement of the administration building. The next day, 18 June 1919, they were taken to an olive grove beside the river Eudon and told to accept Islam. Because they refused, they were killed with torture: first their leader, Nikolaos Avgeridis, was blinded and killed; Philoctetes Argyrakis was skinned alive and cut to pieces; Minos Veinoglou was beheaded; then all the others.

The Church of Greece canonized in 1992 the martyrs of the Asia Minor catastrophe, and the thirty-⁠one scouts of Aydin are commemorated on 18 June in the Greek calendar (new style).