We have scant information about the life of a certain Hegesippus historicus, the presumed author of a Christian rendering into Latin of Flavius Josephus’ Bellum Iudaicum.  The paternity of this work was disputed already at the start of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones (1.17.1), which fluctuates in attributing it to Ambrose, Jerome, and Rufinus; a strand of the manuscript tradition also identifies Hegesippus with Ambrose, an hypothesis followed by Ussani.  The name Hegesippus, by which this author was known throughout the entire high middle ages, would seem to be a bad reading of Josephus that has passed through the Greek Iosepos / Iosippus.  From a chronological point of view, the foundation of Constantinople (AD 330), a city mentioned by the author at 3.5.2, constitutes a terminus post quem; the terminus ante quem - generally fixed at AD 430 - is debated.  Frequent scriptural citations demonstrate firm biblical learning on the part of the author, who likewise possesses a remarkable knowledge of the Classics, ranging from poets like Horace, Ovid, Martial, and Seneca the Younger to prose authors like Tacitus, Livy, and Valerius Maximus.  Hegesippus did not know Hebrew, and his citations of the Sacred Scriptures are mediated by Jewish-Hellenistic sources.  In the prologue to the Bellum Iudaicum, the same author reports that he had previously composed quattuor libros Regnorum.  (E. Della Calce – S. Mollea; tr. C. L. Caterine).