Martyrdom
The synaxarion relates that the persecutors first tore the martyrs' bodies with sharp iron hooks. They were then shut into a heated and flooded bath-house, the doors locked and sealed with the imperial signet so that they could not escape; by tradition an angel of the Lord delivered them from this confinement. Soldiers recaptured the saints and led them outside the city for execution. At their own request they were granted time for prayer before they surrendered their souls, after which their bodies were dismembered and thrown into a fire.
Nicomedia, the chief residence of the emperor Diocletian, was a center of severe persecution at the turn of the fourth century, and Orthodox tradition commemorates a great number of martyrs who suffered there, including the company remembered as the Twenty Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia. These five belong to that wider body of Nicomedian witnesses.