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APPHIANUS was a rich young man from the Roman province of Lycia (now southwest Turkey). Although he could have purchased any pleasure he wanted, he chose to lead a godly life. A convert to Christianity, he rejected the pressure of his classmates and the lures of vice while attending school in Beirut. 

When he returned home, he found that his parents despised his Christian faith. Not yet twenty, he left home secretly to travel to Caesarea in Palestine. There he studied the Scripture with leading Christians, including Eusebius—the same Eusebius who would one day become a notable church historian and record the details of Apphianus’s death. 

In those days, Caesar Maximinus issued edicts commanding the rulers of cities to diligently and promptly require everyone to offer loyalty sacrifices to the emperor. Heralds summoned men, women, and children to the idol temples, where each one was called by name from a scroll. The three ways to escape torture or death were to publicly sacrifice to the idols, bribe an official, or flee. 

Apphianus was horrified by the blasphemy. On this day, 31 March 306, before the other Christians realized what he intended to do, he dashed through the band of soldiers that surrounded Governor Urbanus while the governor was in the act of offering libations (sacrifices), and seized him by the right hand, stopping him in mid-sacrifice. He pleaded with him to abandon his delusion, saying it was not well to forsake the one and only true God to sacrifice to idols and demons. 

The governor was furious. His soldiers beat Apphianus over his whole body, dragged him to prison and set him in the stocks. On the next day, he was ordered to sacrifice and, when he would not, was torn until his bones and bowels showed. When he persisted in professing Christ, the torturers tied his feet in oil-soaked rags and set them afire. Again they dragged him back to prison. 

On the third day, finding he still stood firm in his testimony, the soldiers pitched him into the sea. But, wrote Eusebius,

“as soon as they had cast this truly sacred and thrice-blessed youth into the fathomless depths of the sea, an uncommon commotion and disturbance agitated the sea and all the shore about it, so that the land and the entire city were shaken by it. And at the same time with this wonderful and sudden perturbation, the sea threw out before the gates of the city the body of the divine martyr, as if unable to endure it.”

—Dan Graves

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Trial and Testimony of the Early Church gives accounts of several martyrs not unlike Apphianus. Watch at RedeemTV.

The Trial and Testimony of the Early Church can be purchased at Vision Video.

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Other Events on this Day

• REMARKABLE VAN DER KEMP DENOUNCED SLAVERY AND PROMOTED CHRIST
• Neerskov RISKED Prison to Assist God’s Family

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