The Holy Martyr Thalelaeus and his companions Alexander and Asterius, at Aegae in Cilicia (284)
Thalelaeus was born in Lebanon. His father was called Berucius and his mother Romila. Thalelaeus was an eighteen-year-old youth: hand- some, tall, and with reddish-blonde hair. He was a physician by profession. He suffered for Christ during the reign of Numerian. When he bravely confessed his faith in Christ the Lord before his judge-torturer, the judge ordered the two executioners, Alexander and Asterius, to bore through his knees with a drill, to thread a rope through the perforated bones, and to hang him from a tree. But God, through an invisible power, took away the sight of the executioners. In place of Thalelaeus they bored through a board and hung it from a tree. When the judge-torturer found out, he thought that the executioners had done this intentionally, and he ordered them both flogged. Then Alexander and Asterius cried out in the midst of their flogging: “The Lord is alive to us, and from now on we will also be Christians. We believe in Christ and suffer for Him.” Upon hearing this, the judge-torturer ordered that both be beheaded. Then the judge took the drill to bore the knees of Thalelaeus himself, but his hands became para- lyzed and he begged Thalelaeus to save him. This the innocent martyr of Christ did, with the help of prayer. Afterward, Thalelaeus was thrown into water but then appeared alive before his tormentor (for Thalelaeus had prayed to God inwardly to prolong his sufferings, so that he would not die immediately). When he was thrown to wild beasts, they licked his feet and were amicable toward him. Finally, Thalelaeus was beheaded and took up his habitation in life eternal in the year 284.
