Diogenes (correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium)

Diogenes is known only as a correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium, the ascetic letter-writer active in Pelusium and the eastern Nile Delta in the early-to-mid 5th century. Across these six letters he is addressed at different times as a magistrianus (an agens in rebus, an imperial courier-official), then as presbyter and as deacon, suggesting a man connected both to the imperial administration and to the local clergy. Isidore writes to him in a markedly corrective and combative tenor: he rebukes Diogenes for living in luxury, for drunkenness and carousing, and for shamelessly haunting other men's tables, and he reproaches him for siding with the "tyranny of Eusebius" rather than with justice. At the same time Diogenes engages Isidore in scriptural debate, arguing from the Old Testament alone and asking for the interpretation of difficult Psalm verses, so that the correspondence mixes spiritual reproof with exegetical instruction; beyond these letters he is otherwise unattested.