Story
Lives of the saints and martyrs in the Coptic Orthodox Church.
During the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Lyon in France (the land of Gaul, Lyon) was subjected to a severe wave of persecution, and among its martyrs were the saints Epipodius and Alexander, who from their youth grew up as intimate friends, supporting one another in the life of piety. It is said that the first was from Lyon itself and the second from the lands of the East, and that they were of two noble families.
They lived together in a single house outside the city of Lyon. One of the slaves denounced them to the governor of the city, who summoned them; and when they confessed before him that they were Christians, the pagan crowds raged to kill them, but the governor asked for restraint.
The governor brought Epipodius forward, since he was the younger, in the hope that he might win him over to pagan worship. He began to ask him why he would accept faith in a religion embraced by the basest of people, when he was a young man, of noble origin — especially since the Crucified One promised nothing of the goods of this world, but rather urged poverty, the endurance of insult, and chastity, so that a man is deprived of every temporal pleasure, and rejected the religion of the emperors, the great, and the philosophers, which allows a man to enjoy every desire and pleasure.
Thereupon Epipodius began to speak to the governor boldly of eternal life and the mastery of the body, so that a man should not live a sensual, animal life, but a sublime, spiritual life.
The governor was enraged and ordered him struck on the mouth; yet he kept confessing the name of the Lord Christ while the blood streamed from his mouth, declaring his cleaving to the Cross and to God's saving work. Then the governor ordered his head struck off with the sword, and that was around the year 178 A.D.
When Alexander was brought in and learned what had befallen his friend, he yearned to follow him.
The governor told him that there was no longer a single Christian left in all of Lyon but him, asking him to abandon his Christianity; but he answered, "Do not imagine that you can uproot our religion, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail." Then he proclaimed his longing for martyrdom, and they began to beat him savagely, and they prepared a cross for him, and when they hung him upon it he had already been martyred.
The Greek and Latin Churches commemorate them both on the 22nd of April