Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste

Forty soldiers of the Twelfth Legion, stationed at Sebaste in Lesser Armenia, refused to sacrifice to the gods when the emperor Licinius renewed persecution in the East around 320. Their sentence was calculated cruelty: they were stripped and driven onto a frozen lake on a winter night, while a warm bathhouse stood lit on the shore for any who would recant. One man broke and ran for the bath; a guard named Aglaius, seeing (the tradition says) crowns descending on the martyrs, confessed Christ and took his place, keeping the number at forty. The survivors were killed at dawn and their bodies burned. The feast is ancient and well attested — St Basil the Great preached a surviving homily on them at Caesarea within living memory of the event — and their names were preserved in early lists. They became beloved patrons of soldiers and of endurance.