other · 155–175 · Rome
He travelled from Palestine to Rome by way of Corinth, where he stayed many days and found the church there continuing in the true faith while Primus was bishop, and Eusebius says he met a great many bishops on the way and received the same doctrine from all of them. That is the earliest surviving account of anyone testing the claim by going to see. What he says next is the problem. The manuscripts read that when he came to Rome he remained there until Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus — a stay, diatriben. An old conjecture reads diadochen instead, a succession, and would make this the earliest list of the bishops of Rome and Hegesippus the first person to write one. The word is the one this project is named after, which is reason to be careful with it rather than reason to prefer it. The evidence is against the conjecture: diadoche is not used elsewhere to mean a catalogue, and Eusebius, who hunts succession lists through five books and would have had every reason to quote this one, never does — he gives Irenaeus' list instead. The dates are equally unsettled. On the manuscript reading the stay ends when Anicetus acceded, around 155; Jerome says he went to Rome in the time of Anicetus and continued there till the time of Eleutherus. The years on this event are the envelope of both and are not a claim that either is right.
To find out, by going and looking, whether the churches all taught the same thing.
The report that they did — and a sentence about what he made at Rome that has been argued over ever since.