Baring-Gould’s sources: Modern Roman Martyrology. Greek Menseas and Menologies, together with Archippus, who receives commemoration in the Roman Kalendar on March 30. Authority: — The traditional account in the Menology, of little authority.

HILEMON was probably a native of Colossae; at all events, he lived there when S. Paul wrote to him during his first captivity at Rome, a.d. 63, or early in a.d. 62.

S. Paul associates Archippus, who was a Colossian, with Philemon at the beginning of his letter. It is evident from this letter that Philemon was a man of property and influence, since he is represented as the head of a numerous household, and as exercising an expensive liberality towards his friends and the poor in general. He was indebted to the Apostle Paul for his conversion. His slave Onesimus having run away, S. Paul wrote the letter to Philemon to effect a reconciliation after he had converted and baptized Onesimus. The pseudo Dorothaeus makes Philemon bishop of Gaza. Hippolytus confirms this assertion — that is, one worthless 1 A fabulous personage, see SS- Chrysanthus and Daria, Oct. 25, p. 624 et seq. witness supports another. But the Clementine Constitutions (vii. 46) say that he was ordained bishop of Colossae. The Menology of Basil affirms that he suffered martyrdom at Ephesus in the reign of Nero; but the usually accepted story, drafted into the Roman Martyrology, is that he and his wife Appia were arrested by the pagans of Colossae during the celebration of a festival of Diana, were scourged by order of the governor, Artoclus, and then buried up to their waists in the soil, and stoned to death.