Nicetas, Achominates

, a Greek historian, was born at Chone, or Colossus, a town in Phrygia. He flourished in the thirteenth century, and was employed in several considerable affairs at the court of the emperors of Constantinople. When that city was taken by the French in 1204, he withdrew, together with a young French captive, whom he afterwards married at Nice in Bithynia, and died there in 1206.

He wrote a “History, or Annals, from the death of Alexis Comnenus in 1118, to that of Baudouin in 1205,” entitled “Nicetæ Acominati Choniatæ Hist. Gr. et Lat. ed. C. An. Fabroto,” Paris, 1647, the best edition; but it had been printed with a translation, by Jerome Wolf, at Basil, in 1557, and again at Geneva, in 1593. It has | since been inserted in the body of the “Byzantine Historians,” printed at the Louvre at Paris. This is considered as one of the most valuable pieces in that collection, but the style is Hot good. Father Morel of Tours, in the sixteenth century, translated the five first books of a piece entitled “The treasure of the Orthodox Faith,” ascribed to Nicetas, printed in 1580, 8vo, and inserted since in the twelfth volume of the “Bibliotheca Patruin” of Cologne. We have also a fragment of the twentieth book, concerning what ought to be observed upon the conversion of a Mahometan to Christianity. Michael Choniates, our author’s brother, composed several “Monodies upon his death,” which are translated by Morel, and also composed some other discourses, particularly one upon the “Cross,” the manuscript of which is in the public library at Paris. ¹