The Martyr Alexander and thirty others were a group of Christians who suffered in various places of Asia Minor during the reign of the emperor Diocletian (284-305). According to the synaxarion, the commemoration gathers together a number of named confessors, among them Mark the Shepherd, the brothers Alexander, Alpheius and Zosimus, and the young people Nikon, Neon and Heliodorus, together with companions whose names are not all preserved. They are commemorated together on September 28.
The tradition centers on Mark, a shepherd who was arrested for openly confessing the Christian faith at Pisidian Antioch. The thirty soldiers set to guard him were, by the account, converted through his witness; they were afterward beheaded at Nicea, while Mark himself was reserved for further torture. The synaxarion relates that when his severed head was brought into the pagan temple of Artemis, the idols there fell down and were broken.
Linked to the same events are three brothers, Alexander, Alpheius and Zosimus, described as blacksmiths from the settlement of Katalitea (or Kalitea). They had been ordered to forge the instruments to be used in torturing Mark; by tradition they heard a voice summoning them to suffer alongside him and so confessed Christ. After being tortured, molten tin was poured down their throats. The young men and women who witnessed these things—Nikon, Neon, Heliodorus and others—likewise confessed the faith and died as martyrs at Maromilium, while Mark was finally beheaded at Claudiopolis.
