The Syriac Chronicle Known as That of Zachariah of Mitylene

Zachariah was a native of Gaza who studied law at Alexandria and Beirut and practised as an advocate in Constantinople; he later became bishop of Mitylene. Between 491 and 518 he wrote in Greek a church history of the years 450 to 491. The Greek is lost. An unnamed Syriac writer, who seems to have lived at Amida in Mesopotamia, abridged it as books 3 to 6 of a larger chronicle which he brought down to the year 569, and he says in so many words that these books come from Zachariah.

The work tells the story from the side that rejected Chalcedon. Dioscorus appears in it as a confessor who kept the faith of Athanasius and Cyril, the council’s “two natures” as a return to Nestorius, and the resistance in Alexandria and Palestine as loyalty. It is partisan, as Evagrius is on the other side, and Evagrius used it and argued with it. Read together, the two give both accounts of the same events.