Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/239

Rh PETRUS. m Borae negotiations with Pope Vigilius, then at Chalcedon : at this time he possessed, in addition to his other honours, the dignity of ex-consul or consul codicillaris, and the office of referendarius. (Vigil. Papa, Epistola ad Universam Eccles. apud Concilia^ vol. iii. col. 3. ed. Hardouin.) In a.d. 562 Peter was again sent to arrange the terms of a peace with Chosroes ; and meeting Zichus, the Persian commissioner at or near Dara in Mesopo- tamia, and afterwards proceeding to the court of Persia to negotiate with Chosroes himself, suc- ceeded in concluding a treaty. Meiiander, who has narrated the affair at length {Excerpia de Le- gationibus, pp. 133—147, ed. Paris, pp. 88 — 99, ed. Venice, pp. 346 — 373, ed. Bonn), has given at some length several of the speeches of Peter during the negotiation. Peter died shortly after. (Menander, ibid.) Some suppose he is the Petnis Rhetor mentioned h?ca. Epigramma (No.xviii.) of Leontius in X]Q Anthologia (vol. iii. p. 107, ed. Brunck, vol. iv. p. 77, ed Jacobs), as killed by the falling of a theatre. He left a son named Theodore, who suc- cessively held the offices of magister officiorum and " comes largitionum," and was sent by the emperor Justin II. (a.d. 576) on an embassy to Chosroes. (Menander apud Eacerpta, p. 120, ed. Paris, p. 80, ed. Venice, p. 319, ed. Bonn, cum nota Valesii.) Peter was held in the highest esteem in his own day. Niebuhr has collected various testimonies of his reputation from Byzantine authors. Suidas, who has two articles on Peter (TleTpos o pT^Twp and Uerpos simply ) ascribes to him two works. 1. 'loTToptat, Hisioriae, and 2. Uepl TToKiTiKTJs KaTaardaews, De Statu (or De Con- siitutione) Reipublicae. Of the Historiae consi- derable portions are preserved in the Eoccerpta de Legationibus^ made by order of the emperor Con- stantine Pophyrogenitus. [ConstantinusVII, ; Priscus.] The earliest extract relates to the time of the emperor Tiberius I., the latest to the transactions of the Caesar Julian, afterwards em- peror, in Gaul in the reign of Constantius II. From the date of these extracts and a short frag- ment, subjoined to the Eoccerpta in the Bonn edition, Niebuhr infers that the Historiae began with Augustus, or rather with the second trium- virate, and continued to a period a little later than the time of Constantine the Great, where the His- toria of Eunapius [Eunapius] became more full. Niebuhr conjectures that Peter epitomized the Historia of Dion Cassius as far as that work extended. The De Statu Reipublicae is conjectured by Angelo Mai to be the anonymous work com- posed in the form of a dialogue between the pa- trician Menas and the referendarius Thomas Uepl TToKiTiKTJs^ De Re publica^ briefly analysed by Photius (Biblioth. Cod. 37), and of which Mai considered large fragments, deciphered in a palimp- sest, and published by himself under the title Ilepl iroAiTiKTJs fTTiCTTrj/UTjy, De Scientia Folitiea, in his Scriptorum Veterum Nova Collectio, vol. ii. pp. 590, &c. to be a part. But if the work mentioned by Suidas be, as is most likely, that in which Peter defined the duties of a magister officiorum, as noticed by Joannes Lydus (De Magistratibus, ii. 25, 26), and from which considerable portions (lib. i, c. 84, 85, certainly, and c. 86 — 95, probably) of the work of Constantine Porphyrogenitus De Caeremoniis Aulae Byzantinae are taken, it must have been a different kind of work from that described by Photius. It is not ascertained in PETRUS. 227 which of his works Peter published the account of his negotiations with Chosroes, whether in one of those mentioned by Suidas, or in some other work not mentioned. Menander, who cites the work (apud Eoccerpta, p, 429, ed Bonn), describes it as rf Tou aUrov Uerpov (Twaywyt^, Ejusdem Petri Collectio, a title somewhat indefinite, but which seems to indicate a different Avork from either of those mentioned by Suidas. The accounts could not have been given in the Historiae, unless this came down to a much later period than Niebuhr supposes ; but it may have formed part of the De Reipublicae Statu, if we suppose a part of that work to have been devoted to defining and illustrating the duty of ambassadors. All the remains of Peter are given in the Bonn edition of the Eoccerpta de Legaiionibus, and the valuable prefatory disser- tation by Niebuhr, De Historicis quorum Reliquiae hoc Volmnine continentiir, has been our chief guide in this article. (Compare Reiske's Praefatio, c. ii. to the work of Constantine Porphyrogenitus De CaeremoTiiis ; the dissertation by Mai, De Frag- mentis Politicis Petri Magistri, in the volume already cited of his Scriptorum Veterum No:a Collectio, pp. 571,&c. ; Fabric. Bibl. Grace, vol. vi. p. 135, vol. vii. p. 538, vol. viii. p. 33 ; and Vossius, De Historicis Graecis, lib. ii. c. 22.) 26. Patricius, a Greek saint, who lived early in the ninth century, and of whom a life, taken from the Menaea of the Greeks, is given in the original Greek, with a Latin version, and a Commentariolus Praevins by Joannes Pinius in the J eta Sanctorum, Julii (vol. i. pp. 289, 290). This Petrus had fought in the battle (a. d. 811) against the Bulgarians, in which the emperor Nicephorus I. was defeated and slain. 27. Patricius, a Greek different from the fore- going, and belonging to a somewhat later period. He presented to the emperor Leo VI. Sapieiis [Leo VI.], who began to reign a. d, 886, a copy of Theodoret's Curatio Graecamm Ad/eciionum, to which he prefixed an Epigramma, which is printed at length by Lambecius in his Commen- tarius de Biblioth. Caesaraea, vol. s. lib. iv. col. 399, &c.,ed.Kollar. {Fahvk. Biblioth Grace, vol.xi. p. 338.) 28. Of Ravenna. [No. 10.] 29. Rhetor. [No. 25.] 30. Of Sebaste, an ecclesiastic of the fourth century. He was the youngest of the ten children of Basil and Emmelia, wealthy and excellent per- sons of Caesareia in Cappadocia, who had the hap- piness of numbering among their children those eminent fathers of the church, Basil the Great [Basilius, No. 2], and Gregory of Nyssa [Gre- GORius Nyssenus, St.]. Peter was born, accord- ing to Tillemont's calculation, before A. d. 349, and almost immediately before his father's death. Hia early education was conducted by his sister St. Macrina, who, in the emphatic plirase of Gregory of Nyssa, " was every thing to him, father, teacher, attendant {T^ai^ayoyybs), and mother." The quick- ness of the boy enabled him readily to acquire any- thing to which his attention was directed ; but his education appears to have been conducted on a very narrow system ; profane learning was disregarded ; and the praise given him by his brother Gregory that he attained, even in boyhood, to the heights of philosophy, must be taken with the limitation which such a restrictive system would necessarily implv. If, however, his literaiy culture was thus Q 2