ON TWO HOLY MARTYRS,
AT ASCALON IN PALESTINE.
CommentaryTwo Martyrs, at Ascalon in Palestine (Saints)
G. H.
Ascalon was an ancient maritime city of Palestine, once chief among the cities of the Philistines, and under the Christians an Episcopal see subject to the metropolis of Caesarea: which we have shown was occupied by the Saracens in the eighth century of Christ, in the Acts of the 20 Martyrs, monks of the Laura of Saint Sabas on March 20, chapter 1; and this city, now called Scalona, is still the seat of a Turkish Prefect. To this city the Greeks assign two Martyrs in the printed and manuscript Menaia and in Maximus of Cythera with this eulogy: "On the same day of two Holy Martyrs, who at Ascalon, buried in the earth up to their loins, gloriously ended their life." In the Menaia this distich is added:
"Ἀνήροτυς γῆ καρπὸν ἐκφύει, λέγε, Ὁ κάρπος ἄνδρες ἄχρις ὀσφύος δύο"
"Tell how the untilled earth now bears fruit: The fruit is two men, up to the loins."
That Sirleto, by making Platonis, a pious woman, into a man, did not sufficiently separate her from these Martyrs, and gave others occasion to err the more, we have already said above. At what time these Martyrs earned the crown of glory is not clear. We have subjoined them to Platonis, because, as earlier, so also later, under the iconoclasts or Saracens, the Martyrs could have fallen.