Heliodoros or the Fate of a Christian Councilman of Perinthos During the Great Persecution

This paper discusses a sarcophagus that was found in Gemlik (the ancient city of Kios) some years ago. It bears a longer than usual inscription with many orthographical and some grammatical errors. A certain Eikadios bought the sarcophagus for the burial of his father Heliodoros, who had been a bouleutes and gerousiarches of the city of Thracian Herakleia (Perinthos). In Kios Heliodoros had died as a Christian, but was still unburied, when Eikadios had come there. He had acquired a burial place for him and had taken care for his father’s entombment. In the inscription Eikadios implores the Christian community of Kios to provide for the protection of the sarcophagus, and additionally appointed his sister to a guardian of the burial place and the sarcophagus. By allusions to the name change of Perinthos—which in the inscription is referred to as ‹New Herakleia›— and to the splitting up of the province Thracia into four subprovinces, we can date the inscription into the period after AD 293. Other observations suggest that the death of Heliodoros happened during the last noteworthy persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, that is in the time between February 303 and the so-called Edict of Milan (February 313). Although many things remain obscure, this inscription is an important new testimony for the situation of Christians during the Great Persecution.