GEORGE PISIDA [GEORGIos PISIDES]  , Byzantine poet, born in Pisidia, flourished during the 7th century A.D . Nothing is known of him except that he was a deacon and chartophylax (keeper of the records) of the church of St Sophia . His earliest work, in three cantos (napoavets), on the campaign of the emperor Heraclius against the Persians, seems to be the work of an eye-witness . This was followed by the Avarica, an account of a futile attack on Constantinople by the Avars (626), said to have been repulsed by the aid of the Virgin Mary; and by the Heraclias, a general survey of the exploits of Heraclius both at home and abroad down to the final overthrow of Chosroes in 627 . George Pisida was also the author of a didactic poem, Hexaemeron or Cosmourgia, upon the creation of the world; a treatise on the vanity of life, after the manner of Ecclesiastes; a controversial composition against Severus, bishop of Antioch; two short poems upon the resurrection of Christ and on the recovery of the sacred crucifix stolen by the Persians . The metre chiefly used is the iambic . As a versifier Pisida is correct and even elegant; as a chronicler of contemporary events he is exceedingly useful; and later Byzantine writers enthusiastically compared him with, and even preferred him to Euripides . Recent criticism, however,-GEORGE, LAKE characterizes his compositions as artificial and almost uniformly dull . Complete works in J . P . Migne, Patrologia Graeca, xcii.; see also De Georgii Pisidae apud Theaphanem aliosque historicos reliquiis . (1900), by S .

L . Sternbach, who has edited several new poems for the first

time from a Paris MS. in Wiener Studien, xiii., xiv . (1891–'892); C . Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897) ; C . F . Bahr in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie .