Martyr Potamiaena of Alexandria

Potamiaena was a young Christian woman of Alexandria in Egypt who was put to death for her faith during the persecutions of the early third century. She is remembered above all for enduring severe torture in defense of her chastity and her confession of Christ, and for the prolonged manner of her execution. The Orthodox tradition received by the synaxarion describes her as a slave-woman who guarded both her purity and her faith. She is commemorated on June 7.

The earliest and fullest account of her martyrdom is preserved by the historian Eusebius of Caesarea in his Church History, who sets her death in the persecution at Alexandria during the time the magistrate Aquila governed the city. Eusebius relates that, after she had been subjected to torments throughout her body and had refused the demands made of her, she was condemned to death, and that burning pitch was poured little by little over various parts of her body, from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. According to his account her mother, Marcella, suffered alongside her in the same manner.

Bound up with Potamiaena's passion is the conversion of the soldier Basilides, who was charged with leading her to execution. As the crowd pressed in to insult and mock her, Basilides drove back her tormentors and treated her with pity and kindness. In gratitude she promised that after her departure she would entreat her Lord on his behalf and that he would soon be rewarded for the kindness he had shown her. Not long afterward Basilides openly confessed himself a Christian; he was imprisoned, baptized, and beheaded, and is venerated as a martyr in his own right.