Martyr Meliton of Sebaste

Martyr Meliton was the youngest of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste — Roman soldiers of the XII "Fulminata" Legion who refused to offer pagan sacrifice during the persecution of Emperor Licinius in 320 in Sebaste, Armenia. Condemned by the governor Agricolaus, they were stripped and left overnight on a frozen lake outside the city in freezing cold, with a warm bathhouse deliberately left nearby as temptation to apostasy.

One soldier could not endure it and ran to the bathhouse, where he died instantly; the guard Aglaius, having seen a vision of crowns descending on the remaining thirty-nine, stripped and joined them, restoring the number to forty.

During the final torture — the breaking of their shins — Meliton's mother, standing nearby, urged her son not to fear and to endure to the end rather than fall into despair or apostasy. When the martyrs' bodies were loaded onto carts for burning, only Meliton still showed faint signs of life; his mother carried him herself on her shoulders following the cart so that he would not be separated from his companions, and when he breathed his last, she laid him among the others for the common burning — an act long held up as an example of a mother placing her son's eternal salvation above natural grief.

His feast is kept on March 9/22 together with all Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.