By Fr. George Dorbarakis
These Saints lived when the emperor was Numerian (around the end of the 3rd century A.D.). Chrysanthos had a father who was a senator from Alexandria, named Polemon, while Daria was from Athens. Because Chrysanthos was initiated into divine things by some Christian, he was baptized and preached Christ with boldness, with the result that his own father imprisoned him. However, since he did not yield but remained firm and unmoved in his faith, his father sent and brought from Athens a beautiful and fair maiden, named Daria, in order to marry her to him, so that through his love for her he might move him away from the faith of the Christians. But Daria, instead of persuading Chrysanthos, was rather persuaded, and abandoning the impiety of idolatry, she accepted baptism. Indeed, they agreed that both of them would preserve their virginity.
When the fact of Daria’s conversion also became known, they were accused before the prefect Cellerinus, who handed them over for examination to the tribune Claudius the prefect. He then punished them with many kinds of tortures, but when he saw them overcoming them and not yielding, he himself changed and believed in Christ, together with his wife Hilaria and their two children, Jason and Maurus, as also happened with the soldiers under their command, who later also received the crown of martyrdom, on the nineteenth day of the month of March. And Claudius himself, after being tied to a stone and thrown into the sea, met his end, while his children and his soldiers were beheaded. Saints Chrysanthos and Daria were thrown into a pit, and after earth was thrown over them, they were buried alive, and thus they received the end of their martyrdom.
