Passion
The defining episode of the tradition is the river ordeal. After the beating and the piercing of his heels, Eustathius was dragged to the River Sagka (also given as Sangara) and shut inside a wooden chest, which was thrown into the current. The account relates that an angel of God brought the chest to the shore, sparing the martyr from drowning, and that the governor, confounded by the deliverance, took his own life. Eustathius is said to have died after receiving Communion at the hand of an angel.
Such miraculous-deliverance motifs are common to the passions of early soldier-martyrs, and the surviving notices preserve the narrative without fixing a precise reign or year. The repository record classifies him simply as a martyr of Asia Minor of unknown era.