HERMIAS. - No ancient source mentions this writer, who is known only from the title of his brief work: *Hermiae philosophi irrisio gentilium philosophorum*, which has come down to us in 16 manuscripts, the best of which is codex Patmios 202, attributed to the 10th century. Taking its starting point from St Paul, who calls the wisdom of this world folly (1 Cor 3:19), the work reviews the theories of pagan philosophers on the nature and destiny of the soul and on the ultimate principles of things, mocking them for their contradictions with one another.
Attempts to identify the author solely on the basis of the name’s similarity to E. Sozomen, the historian and continuator of Eusebius, or with the E. (more probably Hermogenes) mentioned by Filastrius of Brescia (*De haeresibus*, 55) and by St Augustine (*De haeresibus*, 59), have yielded nothing beyond what is contained in the work itself. On the basis of this, some (Menzel, Diels, Harnack, Wendland) place him in the 5th–6th centuries; others (Otto, Di Pauli, Bardenhewer, Puech, Stählin), with greater justification, argue—relying on the manuscript designation of the author as “philosopher,” which is common to several works of the 2nd century; on the absence of any reference to Neoplatonism; on the vigour of the polemic, which presupposes a context of intense conflict between paganism and Christianity; and on the dependence of the *Cohortatio ad Graecos* of Pseudo-Justin on the *Irrisio*—that this work belongs to the late 2nd or early 3rd century.
The work has no particular philosophical value. Its theme is a commonplace of sceptical sophistry, widely adopted by apologists opposed to pagan culture. The religious element is little developed, with greater emphasis placed on physical theories than on theology. Yet it does not refrain from expressing properly philosophical judgments. More than a “philosopher,” Hermias is a rhetorician gifted with polemical resources, who employs irony to ridicule his adversaries, even the greatest ones such as Plato and Aristotle.