ISAAC OF ANTIOCH, Syriac author, is said to have flourished under Theodosius II. (408-450), and was a native either of Amid (Diarbekr) or of Edessa. Several writers identify him with Isaac, the disciple of S. Ephraim, who is mentioned in the anonymous Life of that father; but according to the pa triarch Bar Shushan (d. 1073), who made a collection of his homilies, his master was Ephraim's disciple Zenobius. He is sup posed to have migrated to Antioch, and to have become abbot of one of the convents in its neighbourhood. According to Zacharias Rhetor he visited Rome and other cities, and the chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre informs us that he composed poems on the secular games of 404, and wrote on the destruction of Rome by Alaric in 410. He also commemo
rated the destruction of Antioch by an earthquake in 459, so that he must have lived till about 46o. Unfortunately these poems have perished.
It seems safe to conclude with his editor, Bedjan (p. ix.), that works by at least two authors have been included in the collection attributed to Isaac of Antioch. Still the majority of the poems are the work of one hand—the 5th-century Monophysite who wrote the poem on the parrot. A full list of the 191 poems existing in European mss. is given by Bickell, who copied out 181 with a view to publishing them all: the other io had been previously copied by Zingerle.