Catania was the home of the first Sicilian martyr, St. Agatha (died 251 AD). Two fourth-century inscriptions from Catania refer to the saint: the epitaph of the infant Iulia Florentina, who died at Hybla (=Paternò, see inscription 16) aged eighteen months, and was buried in front of the doors of the Shrine of the Christian Martyrs in Catania (this must be a shrine of Agatha and perhaps Euplus) and the epitaph of the infant Agathon (inscription 31), which ends with a prayer to S. Agatha: "All the earth and the air in its wide expanses begets you, o Death. On a sudden, you snatched away my babe – or was there some necessity, for if he had grown old, would he not still have been yours? Master Agathon was born the fifteenth day before the Kalends of November (= 18th October), on the day of Kronos; he lived eleven months; he died the tenth day before the Kalends of September (= 23rd August), on the day of the Sun. Lady Agatha, (grant) peace for Agathon!"
