Baring-Gould’s sources: Greek Menaea, whence Baronins inserted the names in the Modern Roman Martyrology, but by a mistake he called Hesperus, Exuperius. Authority Mention in the Menology and the Greek Acts, neither very trustworthy.

ESPERUS and ZOE were two slaves, the servants of a wealthy man named Catalus, at Attalia, in Pamphylia. Their sons were called Cyriac and Theodulus, and the boys as well as their parents were Christians. One day the boys said to their mother, “Why should we who serve Christ be slaves to this heathen man? Did not S. Paul say, Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers ?” The mother was not much more instructed in S. Paul than her sons, and she urged them to resist their master, rather than to obey him. She was wrong, and they were wrong; but they acted ignorantly, and their ignorance must excuse them. Anyhow they suffered for their disobedience, for their master, after having racked them, cast them all into a furnace, and by their blood they expiated their offence. S. Athanasius [bishop of Alexandria (d. 373), great defender of the Nicene faith].