The life of Platon and Roman
Brought before the governor Agrippinus at a temple of Zeus, he refused the offer of the governor's niece in marriage and would not be moved by threats of torture, choosing, as he put it, a passing death for the sake of life eternal. He was beaten and imprisoned, and when further torment still failed to shake him, he was beheaded. Some later retellings of his sufferings add vivid miraculous details, which this account leaves as the Church's fuller tradition rather than settled fact; sources also differ on the exact year of his death.
Romanus served as a deacon of Caesarea in Palestine and was living in Antioch during a persecution that threatened to destroy the city's church. The ancient historian Eusebius records that he urged the faithful there to hold fast even at the cost of their lives, for which he himself was arrested. Church tradition holds that he was finally put to death by strangulation. Platon and Romanus, though they suffered in different places and are known through different kinds of sources, are remembered together on the same day.
