Story
The martyr Almachus, or Telemachus, presents to us a living image of the self-sacrificing soul that cannot endure evil nor accept cruelty, offering up its life to redeem those who suffer in the Lord.
This saint lived his monastic life in the East. When he came to Rome, it was the time of the gladiatorial games, where thousands would gather in the arena to watch captives or slaves descend into the arena, take up weapons, and fight one another with no purpose save the delight of souls thirsting for the shedding of blood, so that the arena turned into a human slaughterhouse. These games were called the gladiatorial shows.
These spectacles had been turned into a kind of art, so that at times certain free men would descend into them for a sum of money to expose their lives to death; and at times even some women would feel a delight in descending into the arena to fight, and some would fight blindfolded. At times thousands would be killed in a single day merely for the joy of celebrating a Roman feast.
The Eastern monk saw this hideous sight and knew not what to do, save that in love he descended into the field. In vain he tried to reason with them, so he entered into the midst of the combatants, exposing his life to danger. The combatants were enraged, for he had robbed them of the delight of fighting, so they all rose against him and stoned him.
At once the Emperor Honorius perceived this loving heart, and counted him a martyr of love, and proclaimed the abolition of this kind of sport around the year 400 A.D. (The West commemorates him on the first of January.)