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Menander Protector

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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MENANDER PROTECTOR ( IIporierwp, i.e. one of the imperial bodyguards), Byzantine historian, was born in Constantinople in the middle of the 6th century A.D. The little that is known of his life is contained in the account of himself quoted by Suidas. He at first took up the study of law, but abandoned it for a life of pleasure. iWhen his fortunes were low, the patronage accorded to literature by the emperor Maurice (582) encouraged him to try writing history. He took as his model Agathias, who like him had been a jurist, and his history begins at the point where Agathias leaves off. It embraces the period from the arrival of the Cotriguri Hunni in Thrace during the reign of Justinian in 558 down to the death of the emperor Tiberius in 582. Considerable fragments of the work are preserved in the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and in SuIdas. Although the style is sometimes bombastic, he is considered trustworthy and is one of the most valuable authorities for the history of the 6th century, especially on geographical and ethnographical matters. He was an eye-witness of some of the events he describes. Like Agathias, he wrote epigrams, one of which, on a Persian magus, who became a convert to Christianity and died the death of a martyr, is preserved in the Greek anthology ( Anth. Pal. i.

The fragments will be found in C. W. Muller, Frag. hist. graec. iv. 200; J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca, cxiii., and L. Dindorf, Historici graeci minores, ii.; see also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897).