Byzantine chronicler, flourished in the 12th century during the reign of Manuel I. (Comnenus) (11431180). He was the author of a Chronicle or historical synopsis of events from the creation of the world to the end of the reign of Nicephorus Botaniates (1081), written by direction of Irene, the emperors sister-in-law. It consists of about 7,000 lines in the so-called political metre. 1 There is little to be said of it, except that it is rather more poetical than the iambic chronicle of Ephraim (about 150 years later). It obtained great popularity and appeared in a free prose translation; it was also translated into Slavonic. The poetical romance of the Loves of Aristander and Callithea, also in political verse, is only known from the fragments preserved in the Ῥοδωνία (rose-garden) of Macarius Chrysocephalus (14th century). Manasses also wrote a short biography of Oppian, and some descriptive pieces (all except one unpublished) on artistic and other subjects.
EDITIONS.Chronicle in Bonn, Corpus scriptorum hist. Byz., 1st ed. Bekker (1837) and in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia graeca, cxxvii.; Aristander and Callithea in R. Herchers Scriptores erotici graeci, ii. (1859); Life of Oppian in A. Westermann, Vitarum scriptores graeci minores (1845). A long didactic poem in political verse (edited by E. Miller in Annuaire de lassoc. pour lencouragement des études grecques en France, ix. 1875) is attributed to Manasses or one of his imitators. See also F. Hirsch, Byzantinische Studien (1876); C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897).