Acropolita, George

, one of the writers in the Byzantine history, was born at Constantinople in the year 1220, and brought up at the court of the emperor John Ducas, at Nice. He studied mathematics, poetry, and rhetoric under Theodorus Exapterygus, and learned logic of Nicephorus Blemmidas. In his one-and-twentieth year, he maintained a learned dispute with Nicholas the physician, concerning the eclipse of tLe sun, before the emperor John. He was at length appointed great logothete, and employed in the most important affairs of the empire. John Ducas sent him ambassador to Larissa, to establish a peace with Michael of Epirus. He was also constituted judge by this emperor, to try Michael Comnenus on a suspicion of being engaged in a conspiracy. Theodorus Lascaris, the son of John, whom he had taught logic, appointed him governor of all the western provinces of his empire. When he held this government, in the year 1255, being engaged in a war with Michael Angelus, he was taken prisoner by him. In 1260, he gained his liberty by means of the emperor Palasologus, who sent him ambassador to Constantine prince of Bulgaria. After his return, he applied himself wholly to the instruction of youth, in which employment he acquitted himself with great honour for many years; but being at last weary of | the fatigue, he resigned it to Holobolus. In 1272, he sat as one of the judges upon the cause of John Vecchus, patriarch of Constantinople. The year following he was sent to pope Gregory, to settle a peace and re-union between the two churches, which was accordingly concluded; and he swore to it, in the emperor’s name, at the second council of Lyons, in 1274. He was sent ambassador to John prince of Bulgaria in 1382, and died soon after his return. His principal work is his “Historia Byzantina,” Gr. Lat. Paris, fol. 1651. This history, which he was well qualified to write, as he took an active part in public aifajrs, contains the history of about fifty-eight years; i.e. from 1203, when Baldwin, earl of Flanders, was crowned emperor, to 1261, when M. Palseologus put himself in the place of Baldwin II. A manuscript translation of it, by sir William Petty, was in Mr. Ames’s collection. The original was found in the east by Douza, and first published in 1614; but the Paris edition is superior, and now very scarce. His theological writings were never printed. His son Coustantine succeeded him as grand logothete, and was called by the Greeks, the younger Metaphrastes, from his having written the lives of some of the saints in the manner of Simeon Metaphrastes. There is little else in his history that is interesting. ¹