The life of Carpus and Companions at Pergamus
Both refused, confessing Christ openly even under torture, and a woman named Agathonike, who witnessed their courage, chose in the end to share their fate rather than abandon them, despite the crowd's pleas that she think of her child. All three were put to death for their faith, and Christians of the city gathered their remains afterward in secret.
This is one of the oldest surviving Christian martyrdom accounts, and scholars who have studied its earliest surviving form judge it a genuine eyewitness record from the second century, among the very few Acts of the Martyrs considered reliable history in something close to their original form. A longer, later version of the story, compiled centuries afterward, added the titles of bishop and deacon to Carpus and Papylus and multiplied the names of those martyred with them; the Church's memory of the day has followed this fuller telling, though the plainer, older account is the one modern scholarship trusts.
