SOCRATES, the name of an ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century, born at Constantinople in the beginning of the reign of Theodosius: he professed the law and pleaded at the bar, whence he obtained the name of Scholasticus, or the advocate. He wrote an ecclesiastical history from the year 309, when Eusebius ended, down to the year 415; and wrote with great exactness and judgment. His Historia Ecclesiastica was first published in 1554, by Robert Stephens. It has since been frequently reprinted, and translated into many of the European languages. It has recently been rendered into English, along with the other ecclesiastical historians of the early centuries of the Christian era, London, Bagster, 1844.