ZACCARIA THE ORATOR. – Born ca. 465 at Majuma in Palestine and died shortly after 536.
He studied in Alexandria and Beirut. After converting his friend Severus, later bishop of Antioch, to asceticism, he went ca. 492 to Constantinople where he practiced law, hence his title. Z., a prominent figure in the capital, fully adhered to imperial policy which had proclaimed the "Henotikon" (482); then he was elected bishop of Mytilene and as such attended the Constantinopolitan Synod of 536 that condemned his former friend Severus. Z. died in orthodoxy after having followed the Monophysite policy of the Court.
He composed an important historical work whose Greek text has been lost but which survives in Syriac translation within a historical compilation (only books III-IV) by an anonymous 6th-century author. Z.'s narrative covers the years 450-91 and is valuable for what it relates about Palestine and Egypt. Z. also wrote a Life of Severus of Antioch that is rather apologetic, as well as the biography of the Egyptian monk Isaiah, both preserved in Syriac, and that of Peter the Iberian, of which only fragments remain. Also attributed to Z. are the *De mundi officio contra philosophos disputatio*, preserved in Greek, and the *Disputatio contra manichaeos*, of which some fragments survive in Latin translation.