The cave The Sleepers of Ephesus
Editor's note
This is one of the very few commemorations in the calendar that is kept as a sign rather than as a biography. The Church does not commemorate the Seven Sleepers because of what they taught or how they suffered. It commemorates them because of the doctrine their story is told to defend.
The account runs like this. In the persecution under the Emperor Decius, around the year two hundred and fifty, seven young men of Ephesus, soldiers or courtiers of good family, confessed themselves Christians and would not sacrifice. They were stripped of their rank and given time to reconsider. They gave away what they had, went up into a cave on Mount Ochlon above the city, and prayed. The emperor, returning, ordered the mouth of the cave sealed with stone, and it was.
They fell asleep, and slept for something close to two hundred years.
The Menaion gives their names as Maximilian, Jamblichus, Martinian, John, Dionysius, Exacustodianus, who is also called Constantine, and Antoninus.
The waking, and the argument
The next chapter opens when you reach the end.