No account of Evasius's life is regarded by scholars of hagiography as reliable. According to the "Historia e vita di Sant'Evasio Vescovo e Martire" by the Augustinian Fulgenzio Emiglio, published in 1708, he was born in Benevento, moved to Rome in 260 and was sent as a bishop to Asti in 265. There he suffered persecution at the hands of pagan opponents of Christianity and was forced to leave the town. The earliest account of the story, the anonymous "Passio Sancti Evasii", which has been variously dated at early eleventh-century, tenth-century and ninth-century, sets it in the times of the Lombard king Luitprand, who reigned during the years 712–744. In the versions deriving from the latter, Evasius's opponents were Lombard adherents of Arian Christianity, rather than pagans. Still other accounts place his life during the fourth century and have him consecrated as Asti's first bishop around 330. Carbon dating of his relics (assuming that they are genuine) favours the third-century hypothesis.