Antioch & Syriawriter
Who he was
- He was a Syrian philosopher.
- The date and place of his birth is unknown.
- We know that he studied at Alexandria where he acquired a sound Hellenistic education.
- He worked as a head physician in Ris‘ayna (Theodosiopolis), and was also a priest.
- He was Orthodox but remained outside the Christological disputes.
- He was responsible for making known in Syriac speaking circles, all the works that circulated at the start of the 6th century under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite.
- This exercised an immense influence on mystical authors.
- He died in Constantinople.
What he wrote
- He deserves particular attention as a translator of Greek into Syriac.
- The literality and exactness of his versions are of great interest, especially from a lexicographical point of view. Some of these translations served as the basis for Arabic versions.
- Various philosophical works survive: A Treatise on Logic in seven books; On negation and Affirmation; On the Cause of the Universe According to Aristotle’s Principles; On Genus, Species and the Individual.
- His Treatise on Faith is lost.
- Among the works which he translated were: Porphyry’s Isagoge; Aristotles Categories, and a treatise On the Soul; Galen’s treatise on Simples, and other works by Galen on medicine, nutrition and astrology, surviving only in fragments.
- He translated the Geoponics.