HEGEMONIUS

4th-century Christian author, of unknown provenance; fl. c. mid-4th century. He was the author of the Acta Archelai, one of the chief sources for our knowledge of manichaeism. The work is an anti-Manichaean polemic purporting to be a dialogue between Archelaus, Bishop of Kashkar, Mesopotamia, and Manes and his disciple Turbo. The Acta are known in their entirety only through a Latin translation; fragments of the original Greek are found in Epiphanius's treatment of Manichaeism (Panarion 66). St. Jerome attributed the work to Archelaus and thought that it was composed originally in Syriac and translated into Greek (De virus illustribus 72). Heraclianus of Chalcedon, as noted by Photius (Bibliotheca; Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne, 103:288A), is the first to attribute authorship to Hegemonius, but this statement attracted little attention. Hegemonius was usually credited with being the stenographer who recorded the dialogue. The definitive study by C. Beeson established Hegemonius as the author of the Acta, Greek as the original language, and the first half of the 4th century as the date of composition.

Bibliography: hegemonius, Acta Archelai, ed. c. h. beeson (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 16; 1906). g. bareille, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al., 15 v. (Paris 1903–50; Tables Générales 1951–) 6.2:2113–16. p. de labriolle, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912–) 3:1542. b. altaner, Patrology, tr. h. graef from 5th German ed. (New York 1960) 360. e. stommel, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 1:115. w. schmid and o. stÄhlin, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur bis auf die Zeit Justinians (based on the earlier work of w. christ, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft ), 8 v. (Munich 1920–48) 2.2:1440–41.

[h. dressler]