person
Diocletian
also: Диоскор, Diocletian (garbled as Dioskor)
The Roman emperor (r. 284-305) remembered in Christian hagiography as a great persecutor of Christians under whom many martyrs suffered; Fedya, still flush with the emotion of his first confession, daydreams of enduring torments "from some Herod or Diocletian" in the manner of the martyr-saints, garbling the name as a child would.
Reading notes
- During Holy Week §34 from some Herod or Diocletian
Fedya's daydream of the child-martyr's death ("мучения от какого-нибудь Ирода или Диоскора") pairs the biblical Herod with a garbled folk-memory of the Roman emperor Diocletian, notorious in Orthodox hagiography as the great persecutor under whom many venerated martyrs died; "Диоскор" is not a real historical name but a child's approximation, rendered here as "Diocletian" for clarity to an English reader while preserving the sense of a boy reaching for the largest villain-name he half-remembers from saints' lives.