May 12 is the joint feast of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, two Roman martyrs of the late 1st or early 2nd century. The 6th-century Depositio martyrum lists them together on this date, and Pope St. Gregory the Great, in a homily delivered at their basilica, said they were soldiers of the imperial guard who had been converted and refused to fight. The tradition, recorded in the Acts of the 5th century, says they were martyred under the Emperor Trajan and buried on the Via Ardeatina.
The Basilica of Nereus and Achilleus, built over their tomb on the Via Ardeatina at Rome, was restored by Pope John I in 523 and is one of the titular churches of the Roman clergy. The present church, restored in 1874 by the German archaeologist de Rossi, contains the original inscriptions and the marble slab that covered their tomb. Pope Damasus, in the 4th century, composed the epitaph that still stands in the church.
The May 12 feast was kept as an obligatory memorial until the 1969 reform reduced it to an optional memorial. From Rome, where they were martyred and are buried, the May 12 feast is the feast of the two soldiers who refused to shed blood and shed their own instead.
