Zoticus

Holy Martyr Zoticus was, with Dasius and Caius, one of three servants of the emperor Diocletian at the imperial residence in Nicomedia in Bithynia. They died in the year 303, at the beginning of Diocletian's persecution. The three were unjustly accused of trying to set fire to the imperial palace, after the edict against the Christians; they were thrown from a boat and drowned for not renouncing their faith. The facts are told by the Christian writers Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea, and a short Greek passio survives in the Byzantine synaxaria. The Syriac Martyrology of the beginning of the fifth century recalls them without details, the Hieronymian Martyrology shows them as martyrs at Nicomedia, and the Roman Martyrology commemorates them on 21 October (new style). They are saints of the undivided Church, venerated in the Catholic Church.