She then gained her parents' permission to go out in a covered litter on their country estate with her two books and on the journey discussed with her two eunuchs Protus and Hyacinth (who grew up with her and shared her pagan background).

She argued that all pagan poets' and philosophers' writings on religion ridiculous and hollow compared to the two books and - as they continued their discussion - they heard Christians led by Helenus, bishop of Heliopolis, singing "All the gods of the nations are demons" (Psalm 96, 5).

Two years after becoming a monk, when the abbot died, her community's members unanimously voted her to be his successor but she obstinately refused the honour until a random 'opening of the book' produced Matthew 20, 25–27.

Protus and Hyacinth were beheaded by the sword on September 11, 258, and Eugenia followed suit the same year after Christ appeared to her in a dream and told her that she would die on the Feast of the Nativity.

An edition of the Life was published in Milan just before 1478 by Boninus Mombritius, in his Sanctuarium seu vitae sanctorum, later republished with improvements by the monks at Solesmes Abbey.

It seems Eugenia originated simply as the name of a hypothetical and obscure martyr or a pious and generous woman of Rome and was then - according to fabulous methods of hagiography detailed in Hippolyte Delehaye's work, especially Les légendes hagiographiques[16] - applied to a real saint more or less 'retouched'.

Her hagiography's rich intertextuality has been treated by Eric Gordon Whatley[17] The stories attached to this Eugenia appealed to a wide variety of audiences from readers of Virgil and secular novels to pious Christians (especially women, monks and nuns[18] looking for edifying tales.

She takes on a multitude of roles - a learned, distinguished and beautiful noblewoman, a converted teenager fleeing her family, a new Thecla, a valiant Romano-Alexandrine athlete straddling two worlds (the prestige marytrdom-site of Rome and the exoticism of Egypt), heroine of chastity accompanied by two eunuchs, an innocent victim of calumny reminiscent of Phaedra, Potiphar's wife and the earliest Greek female doctor Agnodice,[c] and enactor of a daring anagnorisis.

All these roles are stereotypes from 'epic passion narratives'[19] The work also has erotic undertones in her showing her beautiful breasts before a large crowd (repeated in the Life of Saint Apolinaria[20][21]) and also potential lesbianism in the relationship desired by Melanthia.

These undercurrents also left traces in later hagiography, at least in the eastern church, where the Coptic Legend of Hilaria (BHO 279) omits the showing of the breasts but includes a suspicion of incest between the saint and her sister.

Patrick J. Geary, in his work Furta Sacra, states that "on April 5, 838, a monk named Felix appeared at Fulda with the remains of Eugenia of Rome along with those of Saints Cornelius, Callistus, Agapitus, Georgius, Vincentius, Maximus, Cecilia, Digna, Emerita, and Columbana.