A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

1. Libanius appears to have had two friends and correspondents of this name about the middle of the fourth century: one a priest (Ep. 636), the other a magistrate (Ep. 773, 914). One of them had two sons, Eutropius and Celsus, to whom Libanius was much attached, and who were possibly his pupils, and several daughters, to one of whom a cousin of Libanius was married (Ep. 375). Libanius was anxious to promote the marriage of a grandson of an Hesychius (perhaps one of the two above mentioned) by his son Calliopius, with a daughter of Pompeianus (Ep. 1400). Possibly the magistrate Hesychius, the correspondent of Libanius, may be the Hesychius or Esychius mentioned by Jerome (Epistola 33 (olim 101) ad Pammach. ; Opera, vol. iv. pt. ii. col. 249, ed. Benedictin.) as a man of consular rank, bitterly hated by the patriarch Gamaliel, and who was condemned to death by the emperor Theodosius for bribing a notary, and pillaging some of the imperial records. Fabricius understands the notice in Jerome of Hesychius, who was proconsul of Achaia, under Theodosius II. A. D. 435 (Cod. Theodos. 6. tit. 28.8); but this is not likely, for if the Benedictine editors are right in fixing A. D. 396 as the date of the letter to Pammachius, the Theodosius there mentioned must have been Theodosius I. the Great; and if Hesychius was executed (as Jerome seems to say)in his reign, he could not have been proconsul in the reign of his grandson Theodosius II. The Hesychius of the Codex Theodosianus may perhaps be the one mentioned in the letters of the monk Nilus, the pupil of Chrysostom. (Libanius, Epistolae, ll. cc., and Ep. 1010; Cod. Theodos. l.c.; Hieron. l.c.; Nili Ascetae Epistolae. Lib. ii. Ep. 292, ed. Allatii; Fabr. Bibl. Gr. vol. vii. p. 547.)