Theodotus was an innkeeper of Ancyra, the capital of the Roman province of Galatia in Asia Minor, who is commemorated together with seven aged virgin-martyrs of the same city. By tradition they lived in the later third century and suffered at the beginning of the fourth, during a persecution that the sources place under the local prefect of Ancyra. Theodotus and the seven virgins are remembered as one group, the virgins for their constancy under torture and Theodotus for both sheltering the persecuted faithful and recovering and burying the bodies of the martyred women.
Theodotus was married and kept an inn, which during the persecution he turned into a refuge for Christians, a place of care for the sick, and a setting for worship. When the churches of Ancyra were closed and destroyed, the Divine Liturgy is said to have been celebrated in his inn. He made it his particular work to bury the remains of martyrs, carrying off their bodies secretly or ransoming them from the soldiers who guarded them.
The seven virgins—named in the tradition as Tecusa, Alexandra, Claudia, Phaine, Euphrasia, Matrona, and Julia—were elderly women consecrated to Christ; the eldest, Tecusa, is described as the aunt of Theodotus. Refusing to sacrifice to idols, they were subjected to torments and then drowned in a lake, a heavy stone tied to the legs of each. According to the account, Tecusa afterward appeared to Theodotus and asked that the bodies be given Christian burial. Guided, as the tradition relates, by an angel, Theodotus recovered all seven bodies and buried them honorably.
This act of burial led to Theodotus's own arrest. A companion who had helped him betrayed him, and Theodotus was seized, cruelly tortured, and put to death by beheading. The account of the martyrdom of Theodotus and the seven virgins is attributed to Nilus, described as a contemporary and companion of the saint, and is preserved among the early martyr-acts.
