Lucius of Cyrene is named in the Acts of the Apostles among the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch. Acts 13:1 lists him alongside Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Manaen, and Saul (the Apostle Paul), placing him within the leadership of one of the earliest and most influential Christian communities outside Jerusalem. His epithet identifies him with Cyrene, the principal Greek city of the region of Cyrenaica in North Africa, in what is today Libya.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition Lucius is numbered among the Seventy Apostles whom Christ sent out to preach. This reckoning is a matter of tradition rather than direct scriptural statement; ancient witnesses such as Pseudo-Hippolytus list him among the Seventy, while modern scholarship regards the identification as uncertain. He is also traditionally identified with the Lucius greeted by the Apostle Paul in Romans 16:21, though sources note there is no way to confirm with certainty that the two references name the same man.
Tradition holds that Lucius later served as a bishop. Sources variously name him as the first bishop of Cyrene or as a bishop of Laodicea; the Orthodox synaxaria associated with his September commemoration place him at Laodicea in Syria. Little beyond these notices survives concerning the events of his life and the circumstances of his repose, which is placed in the first century.
Lucius is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on September 10 together with the Apostles Apelles of Heraklion and Clement of Sardis, both also reckoned among the Seventy. He is additionally commemorated on April 22 and, with the whole company of the Seventy, on January 4.
