Romulus

Holy Martyr Romulus was a Christian of the second century, a member of the court of the Roman emperor Trajan, who died as a martyr around 117. He is commemorated on 5 September according to the English source; the Serbian source gives 6 September by the old calendar (19 September by the new), and the record gives 6 September.

According to the Synaxarion of the Church of Constantinople, Romulus held a high office at the court of the emperor Trajan, being praepositus of Caesar. At first he was a tormentor of Christians. Trajan sent Romulus to Gaul to compel the soldiers of the Roman army to worship the pagan gods. The Christian soldiers refused to carry out the emperor's command to sacrifice to idols. For this the emperor sent the Christian soldiers, 11,000 in number, in disgrace into exile in Armenia, hoping that this would compel them to renounce Christ and sacrifice to idols and that they would then return to their military rank and again receive their former military honours. At Melitene, according to the Russian source, the soldiers were put to death by the emperor. Romulus, seeing the emperor's cruelty and the courage of the soldiers who had died for Christ, repented and confessed before the emperor that he was a Christian. The Serbian source says that, first among them, he came before the emperor, rebuked him for his godlessness and for the unreasonable act, since in war he was destroying his own army, and that Romulus confessed that he too was a Christian and ready to die for the name of Jesus Christ.

Trajan was terribly angered at Saint Romulus. By the emperor's order Romulus was tortured, then beheaded; the emperor ordered him beaten without mercy. The other Christian soldiers sent to Armenia were also put to death in various ways: ten thousand of them were crucified in the desert around Mount Ararat in Armenia, and the rest were killed by other torments. In the Synaxarion of the Church of Constantinople, Romulus and Eudoxius are described in one chapter, but it is stated that they lived at different times. The Menologion of Basil II contains a combined legend of two saints who lived in different centuries: Romulus, put to death in the second century by Trajan, and Eudoxius, put to death in the fourth century by Diocletian. The confusion of the lives probably arose from the coincidence of their days of commemoration. In the Menologion of Basil II the image of Romulus is also found together with that of Eudoxius. The details of the 11,000 soldiers fit the story of Eudoxius and the martyrs of Melitene better than the time of Trajan.