Mennas was a Christian Egyptian soldier who had withdrawn himself into a desert place to do penance, but one day, during the persecution under the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, upon the said Emperors' birthday, when the people were gathered together at a great show, stood forth in the theatre, and reviled with a loud voice the idolatries of the Gentiles. Thereupon he was arrested, and being bound at Cotyaeus, the chief city of Phrygia, under the authority of the Governor Pyrrhus, was first savagely lashed with thongs, then racked, then scarified with fire applied to his naked body, then had his wounds lacerated by rubbing with hair-cloth, then dragged through thorns and iron spikes with hands and feet tied, then lashed again with whips loaded with lead, and lastly slain with the sword, and thrown into a fire. The Christians saved his body thence and buried it, and it hath in after times been carried to Constantinople.
