Confession and Martyrdom
The tradition records that the confessors appeared before Lycias, the procurator of the Armenian district, who was reportedly astonished at the boldness of men who had condemned themselves voluntarily to torture and death. When he sought to persuade them to renounce Christ, they refused, denouncing the falseness of the pagan gods.
The synaxarion relates that the procurator ordered the confessors to be beaten about the face with stones and then shackled and imprisoned. As they sang psalms at midnight, an angel is said to have appeared to them and filled the prison with light, declaring that their contest was near its end and their names already inscribed in heaven. By tradition two of the prison guards, named Meneus and Virilad (also given as Belerad), witnessed this and themselves believed in Christ.
After further tortures, in which their hands and feet were cut off, the martyrs were burned in a fire and their bones cast into a river. Their number is traditionally fixed at forty-five.