HERMIAS, an ecclesiastical historian of the 5th century, was born in Bethelia, a town of Palestine. He was educated for the law, and became a pleader at Constantinople. He wrote an Abbridgement of Ecclesiastical History, in two books, from the ascension of our Saviour to the year 323. This compendium is lost; but a continuation of it in nine books, written at greater length, down to the year 440, is still extant. He seems to have copied Socrates, who wrote a history of the same period. The style of Sozomenus is perhaps more elegant; but in other respects he falls far short of that writer, displaying throughout his whole book an amazing credulity and a superstitious attachment to monks and the monastic life. The best edition of Sozomenus is that of Robert Stephen in 1544. He has been translated and published by Valentinus, and republished with additional notes by Reading at London, 1720, in 3 vols folio.