ON THE TEN HOLY SOLDIER-MARTYRS AT ROME, ON THE VIA LABICANA.
CommentaryTen Soldier-Martyrs, at Rome (SS.)
By I. B.
[1] One may not unreasonably suspect that these glorious soldiers, together with the four already mentioned, attained their triumph not only on the same day of the month, but in the same persecution and at the same place, since in most Martyrologies they are reported jointly. The birthday of these Saints; And indeed an ancient Trier manuscript so joins them: At Rome, of the holy Martyrs Zoticus, Irenaeus, Hyacinthus, and Amantius, and of ten other Soldiers. The Carmelite manuscript of Cologne has the same, and the manuscript of St. Cyriacus at Rome, to be cited below. The following alone is found about them in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker, Bellinus, Maurolycus, and others: At Rome, on the Via Labicana, of ten soldiers. The ancient and modern Roman Martyrology has no more. Galesinius writes that they were crowned under Decius, like the former, but does not prove it: Likewise at Rome, he says, the time of martyrdom, of ten holy soldier-martyrs, illustrious for the torments of the same persecution, which they bravely endured. Ferrarius follows him in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy: In the same persecution of Decius, he says, ten soldiers seized for Christ's sake, completed their martyrdom on the Via Labicana on the fourth day before the Ides of February, having steadfastly endured their torments. But whence did he learn that they were first tested by torments? Why could they not, when they refused to offer incense to the Gods, or to perform some other act of profane superstition, have been led immediately to execution?
[2] The Via Labicana, so called because it led to Labici, or Labicum, an ancient town distant fifteen miles from the City, a place outside the Esquiline gate, where executions took place. though leaving it to the right: it began from the Esquiline gate, outside which punishments were customarily inflicted on criminals — as many learned men observe from that passage of Tacitus, Annals 2: Against Publius Marcius the Consuls, having ordered the trumpet to be sounded outside the Esquiline gate, punished him in the ancient manner. There were also in the same place on the Esquiline Field the Puticuli, into which the corpses of condemned or base men were cast. That field was between the Via Praenestina and the Via Labicana, as is clear from Strabo, who writes thus in book 5 about the Via Labicana: Beginning from the Esquiline Gate, from which also the Praenestine Road proceeds, leaving to the left both this road and the Esquiline Field, etc. Concerning this field, or the gibbet fixed there, many understand the jest found in Cicero, On the Orator, book 2, section 68: Indeed, from the Esquiline Gate I see your villa. More on this road and field may be found in Baronius, Notes on the Martyrology under this day; Justus Lipsius and Ludovicus Dorleans on the cited passage of Tacitus; and Laevinus Torrentius on that passage of Suetonius in his Life of Claudius, chapter 25: He struck with the axe on the Esquiline Field those who had usurped the Roman citizenship. Whether, however, these Martyrs were killed in that field, or farther from the City, as very many other Martyrs were, outside other gates as well, is uncertain.
[3] The manuscript Martyrology of the monastery of Saint Cyriacus at Rome, often cited by Baronius, associates these also with Zoticus, are there not more? and increases the number. For it reads thus: At Rome, of Zoticus, Hereneus, Hyacinthus and Amantius, and ninety others.