ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN SEVEN BOOKS, FROM THE ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE, A.D. 305, TO SAMUEL BAGSTER AND SONS: WAREHOUSE FOR BIBLES, NEW TESTAMENTS, PRAYER-BOOKS, LEXICONS, PATERNOSTER ROW. THE LIFE OF SOCRATES, AND AN ACCOUNT OF HIS WRITINGS. SOCRATES, our historian, was a native of Constantinople; for he himself states that he was born and educated in that city, and that for this reason he has detailed principally events which occurred there. In his youth his philological studies were prosecuted under the direction of the grammarians Helladius and Ammonius, both of whom were idolaters; who having withdrawn from Alexandria about this time, had taken up their abode at Constantinople. The reasons which induced them to migrate from Alexandria, are thus explained by Socrates himself. When the Pagan temples had been pulled down, by the zeal and exertion of Theophilus bishop of that city, Helladius and Ammonius (one of whom had been a priest of Jupiter at Alexandria, and the other of Simius), grieved at the contempt which was cast upon their gods, quitted the scene of what they considered sacrilege, and retired to Constantinople. These transactions took place during the consulship of Tamasius and Promotus, according to the "Chronicon" of Marcellinus, which was the eleventh year of the Emperor Theodosius. It would therefore appear that Socrates was born about the commencement of his reign, inasmuch as boys were generally placed under the tuition of grammarians at ten years of age: but some date his birth in the year 380. He afterwards studied rhetoric Book v. chap. 16. |