AP 1.11, on a Church of the Holy Anargyri

On the Holy Anargyri in the district of Basiliscus

Unto your servants I, your servant too,

Sophia, make this gift. Accept your own,

Christ, and repay Justinian my lord

In victories piled upon victories

Against the plagues and the barbarians.

Justinian I 'the Great', Eastern Roman emperor from 525-561, was an aggressive and successful conqueror, but an outbreak of bubonic plague devastated Byzantium during his reign. The Anargyri, ‘Unmercenary Physicians’, were Saints Cosmas and Damian, two brothers martyred in Cilicia in the late third century. They won many converts by charging no fee for their services. Their story was too good to use just once: tradition attests the martyrdom near Rome a couple of years earlier of a separate Cosmas and Damian, who were also brothers and Unmercenary Physicians.