THE CONFESSION OF ARES, AND PRIMUS (Gr. Promus), AND ELIAS,

IN THE SIXTH YEAR OF THE PERSECUTION IN OUR DAYS AT ASHKELON.

IN the month Canun the former, on the fourteenth of the same--on this day some Egyptian martyrs of God were seized before the gates of Ashkelon; and because, when they were questioned as to who they were, they acknowledged that they were Christians,

and confessed that they had undertaken the journey, and were come from their own country for the purpose of taking sustenance to the confessors who were in Cilicia, they also were brought as malefactors before the judge. For the keepers of the gates of the city were cruel men, and laid hold upon these martyrs, and took them before Firmillianus the governor, because he was also, up to that time, still over the people of Palestine; and he decreed a cruel sentence against them: and some of them he ordered to have their eyes and their feet injured by fire and steel, and some of them to be delivered over to death by the sword; but one of them, whose name was Ares, was consummated in his confession by a fierce fire, and Primus and Elias were beheaded by the sword. ^[35]