Philo

Saint Philo was a deacon and companion of Bishop Ignatius of Antioch. According to Ignatius, he came from Cilicia; he was a deacon at Tarsus and often accompanied Ignatius. Together with Agathopus (Agathopodes), a deacon of Antioch who also sometimes accompanied Ignatius, he is said to have travelled with the bishop from the East to Rome, in the year 107, where Ignatius received martyrdom. Ignatius mentions him twice in his epistles. He is supposed to have written the Martyrium Ignatii (Martyrdom of Ignatius) with Rheus Agathopus, which describes Ignatius's sentence by the emperor Trajan and his death, devoured by beasts in the circus. According to tradition, Philo and Agathopus then brought Ignatius's bones back to Antioch. Philo died around the year 150. He is commemorated with Agathopus on 25 April, by the Western calendar.