Sozomen

Also called Salaminius Hermias Sozomenus. Fifth century. Church historian. A lawyer at Constantinople, but originally from Bethelia near Gaza in Palestine, he is named most commonly in the trilogy with Socrates and Theodoret as continuator of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, which as the Tripartite History was translated into late sixth- century Latin traditionally by Cassiodorus, perhaps by Epiphanius under the former's inspiration. Sozomen has been assumed to be the least independent of these initiating histories of the Christian Roman Empire, for large sections share directly without reference the parallel Socrates. Both have a concern to report the growth of monasticism as created by Christian Egypt. Yet he may have intended to revamp Socrates with fuller details both of the Western Empire and Church and of the Eastern Persian front with its Christian martyrs. The work in nine books specifies that it covered the period from the third consulate of the Caesars, Crispus and Constantine (324), to the seventeenth of Theodosius II (439), to whom it is dedicated before his death in 450. The conclusion is now missing, as is Sozomen's earlier epitome in two books of church history from the Ascension to the defeat of Licinius (323).