Saints Nereus and Achilleus

What we know of Nereus and Achilleus is what a pope said about them, seventeen hundred years ago, and we know it because that stone turned up. Pope Damasus, between 366 and 384, had an inscription carved on their tomb. The text was already known from medieval copies — manuscripts from Einsiedeln, Heidelberg, Klosterneuburg — but in 1874 Giovanni Battista de Rossi found two fragments of it on site, in the Catacombs of Domitilla, and it became certain. The inscription says: they had enlisted and carried out a cruel service, ready to execute the tyrant’s orders out of fear. Then — and Damasus writes “mira fides rerum,” a wondrous thing — they suddenly laid that fury aside. They converted, threw away their shields, breastplates and weapons, and confessed the triumph of Christ. So they were two Roman soldiers, probably killed in the persecution of Diocletian. What Damasus puts at the center is not the way they died, but the moment they changed trades: two men who carried out orders and one day stopped. The Basilica of Saints Nereus and Achilleus still stands in Rome, by the Baths of Caracalla. If your name is Nereus, today is your name day.