Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/599

Rh JOANNES. thnation of her husband. Upon this, Theodora and Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, concerted one of those petty plots through which women often suc- ceed in ruining men : they surrounded him with false flatterers, who pointed out to him the pos- sibility of seizing the crown from Justinian, and Antonina, having feigned hostile intentions towards the emperor, persuaded John to an interview with her. Their conversation was heard by spies placed there by Antonina and the empress, and Justi- nian having been informed of it, deprived him of his office, confiscated his property, and forced him to take the habit of a monk. Soon afterwards, however, he gave him most of his estates back, and John lived in splendour at Cyzicus (541). Four years afterwards he was accused by Theodora of having contrived the death of Eusebius, bishop of Cyzicus, who was slain in a riot, and he was now exiled to Egypt, where he lived in the greatest misery, till after the death of Theodora he was allowed to return to Constantinople. There he led the life of a mendicant monk, and died in obscurity. [Justinianus, 1.] (Procop. Bell. Fers. i. 24, 25, ii. 30, Bell. Vand. i. 13, Anecdot. c. 2, 17, 22 ; Theophanes, p. 160, ed. Paris.) [W. P.] JOANNES {^luavvit]s Literary and Ecclesias- tical. The index to the Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius contains a list of about two hundred persons by whom this name was borne ; and many more are recorded by the Byzantine histori- ans, or noticed in the Bibliotheca Orientcdis of As- semani, the Historia Litteraria of Cave, and the ca- talogues of MSS. by Montfaucon and others. Many of these persons are too obscure to require notice here, and information respecting them must be sought in the works above mentioned : others are better known by their surnames, as Joannes Chry- sostomus, Joannes Damascenus, Joannes Xiphilinus, and Joannes Zonaras, and are given elsewhere. [Chrysostomus, Damascenus, &c.] The re- mainder we give here, with the references to those who are treated of under their surnames : — 1. ACTUARIUS. [ACTUARIUS.] 2. Aegeates (d Ai76aTTjs), a presbyter of Aegae {Pdyai), apparently the town so called in Cilicia, between Mopsuestia and Issus. Photius calls him (cod. 55) a Nestorian ; but Fabricius, with reason, supposes that this is a slip of the pen, and that he was an Eutychian. He wrote, 1. *E/c- KKT(TiaaTLKr laropia, Historia Ecclesiastica, in ten books. Photius had read five of these, which contained the history of the church from the de- position of Nestorius at the council of Ephesus, (the third general council, A. D. 431,) to the deposition of Petrus FuUo (a. d. 477), who had usurped the see of Antioch, in the reign of the emperor Zeno. As the council of Ephesus is the point at which the ecclesiastical history of Socrates leaves oflF, it is probable that the history of John of Aegae com- menced, like that of Evagrius [Evagrius, No. 3J, at that point, and consequently that the five books which had been read by Photius were the first five. Photius describes his style as perspicuous and florid ; and says that he was a great admirer of Dioscoras of Alexandria, the successor of Cyril, and extolled the synod of Ephesus (a. d. 449), generally branded with the epithet r) Xr)crTpiKij, " the synod of rob- bers " [Flavian US, No. 3], while he attacked the council of Chalcedon. To how late a period the history came down cannot be determined; if known, JOANNES. 585 it might guide us in determining the time when the writer lived. 2. A work which Photius describes as KuTci TVS dyias rera^TTjs avvodov, Adversus Quartam Sanctam Sytiodum. This must be Pho- tius's description, not the original title of the work; for a writer against the authority of the council of Chalcedon would hardly have described it as " the fourth sacred council.'' Photius commends the style in which the work was written. Fabricius identifies John of Aegae with the Joannes 6 Sia- Kpivo/xevos, i. e. " the dissenter," cited by the anony- mous writer of the ALaaToia-eis avPTOfioi xP^^^x^-K Breves Demonstrationes Chronographicae, given by Combefis in his Originum CPolitinarum Manipulus (pp. 24, 33) ; but Combefis himself {Ibid. p. bQ) identifies this Joannes 6 AiaKpiuSfieuos with Jo- annes Malalas. The epithet AiuKpivofxevos was applied to one who rejected the authority of the council of Chalcedon. VV hether John of Aegae is the Joannes 6 Pi^Twp, " the Rhetorician," cited by Evagrius Scholasticus (H. E. i. 16, ii. 12, iii. 10, &c.), is doubtful. Le Quien {Opera S. Joannis Damasceni, vol. i. p. 368, note) identifies them, but Fabricius thinks they were difl'erent persons. [See below. No. 105.] The period at which John of Aegae lived is not determined : Vossius places him under Zeno ; Cave thinks he was later. (Photius, Bibl. cod. 41, 55 ; Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vol. vii. p. 419 ; Cave, Hist. Lit. vol. i. p. 456, ed. Oxford, 1740-43.) 3. Aegyptius, or of Egypt (1). A Christian martyr, who suifered in Palestine in the persecution generally known as that of Diocletian. Eusebius speaks of him as the most illustrious of the suflferers in Palestine, and especially worthy of admiration for his philosophic (i. e. ascetic) life and conversa- tion, and for the wonderful strength of his memory. He suff"ered the loss of his eyesight, either in the earlier part of Diocletian's persecution, or at some earlier period ; but afterwards acted as Ana- gnostes or reader in the cliurch, supplying the want of sight by his extraordinary power of memory. He could recite correctly, as Eusebius testifies from personal observation, whole books of Scripture, whether from the prophets, the gospels, or the apo- stolic epistles. In the seventh year of the perse- cution ( A. D. 310) he was treated with great cruelty one foot was burnt ofl", and fire was applied to his sightless eyeballs, for the mere purpose of torture. As he was unable to undergo the toil of the mines or the public works, he and several others (among whom was Silvanus of Gaza), whom age or infir- mity had disabled from labour, were confined in a place by themselves. In the eighth year of the persecution, a. d. 311, the whole party, thirty- nine in number, were decapitated in one day, by order of Maximin Daza, who then governed the Eastern provinces. (Euseb. de Marti/rib. Palaes- tinae^ sometimes subjoined to the eighth book'of hia Hist. Eccles. c. 13.) 4. Aegyptius (2). [See No. 16.] 5. Aegyptius (3). A monk of the Thebaid, celebrated for his supposed power of foretelling future events. The emperor Theodosius the Great, when preparing for his expedition against Eugenius (a. d. 393 or 394), sent the eunuch Eutropius to fetch Joannes to court, that the emperor might learn ^from him what would be the result of the expedition. Joannes refused to go with the eu- nuch ; but sent word to the emperor that he would gain the victory, but would soon after die in Italy.