NEREO and ACHILLEO, saints, martyrs. — They are commemorated in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum on 12 May; the Itineraries of the seventh century recall them as buried in the church of S. Petronilla near the cemetery of Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina. The time and manner of their martyrdom are unknown, but they were probably killed in the military persecution of Diocletian.
Pope Damasus composed a poem in their honor, from which it may be inferred that N. and A. were soldiers, assigned to the tribunal of a judge and charged with capital executions; they suddenly converted, abandoned military service, and, by confessing the Christian faith, merited eternal glory. According to the representation on a small column, still extant, which must have been placed on the altar constructed over their tomb, they were beheaded. In the sixth century the Titulus de Fasciola, which stood near the Baths of Caracalla and whose clergy administered the cemetery of Domitilla, was dedicated in their honor.
Their burial in this cemetery, specifically in the church of S. Petronilla, who was believed, because of the similarity of her name, to be the daughter of the apostle Peter, prompted the imagination of a hagiographer to write, sometime between the fifth and sixth centuries, a Passio of these martyrs that is in complete contrast with Pope Damasus’s epigram.