Filemone

This name derives from the Ancient Greek “Philḗmōn (Φιλήμων),” meaning “kindly, affectionate.” Philemon was an early Christian in Asia Minor who was the recipient of a private letter from Paul of Tarsus. This letter is known as Epistle to Philemon in the New Testament. He is known as a saint by several Christian churches, along with his wife, Apphia. Philemon was a wealthy Christian and a minister of the house church that met in his home in Colosse, Phrygia. Baucis and Philemon were an old married couple in the region of Tyana, which Ovid places in Phrygia. The only ones in their town to welcome disguised gods Zeus and Hermes (in Roman mythology, Jupiter, and Mercury respectively), thus embodying the pious exercise of hospitality, the ritualized guest-friendship termed xenia, or theoxenia when a god was involved.