SS. NEREUS AND ACHILLEUS, MARTYRS

THEY were eunuchs or chamberlains belonging to St. Flavia Domitilla, zealous Christians, and with her were banished by Domitian into a little isle on the coast of Terracina, called Pontia. Their acts say, that they were afterwards beheaded at Terracina, under Trajan. Their festival was kept at Rome with great solemnity, in the sixth age, when St. Gregory the Great spoke on it his twenty-eighth homily, in which he says: “These saints, before whose tomb we are assembled, despised the world and trampled it under their feet, where peace, plenty, riches, and health gave it charms.” Their old church in Rome lay in ruins, when Baronius, to whom it gave the title of Cardinal, rebuilt it with splendor, and restored to it their relics, which had been removed to the chapel of St. Adrian.