His poems suggest that he was a Pisidian by birth, and a friend of
Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople and the Emperor
Heraclius. He was a
deacon, guardian of the sacred vessels,
referendary, and
chartophylax (keeper of the records) of the
church of St. Sophia. His works have been published in the original Greek with a Latin version. About five thousand verses of his poetry, most in trimetric iambics, have survived. His earliest work, in three cantos, is
De expeditione Heraclii imperatoris contra Persas, libri tres on Heraclius' campaign against the
Persians in 622 (a campaign in which a relic purporting to be the
True Cross, which the
Persians had captured some years before at Jerusalem, was recovered), seems to be the work of an eyewitness. This was followed by the
Avarica (or
Bellum Avaricum), an account of a futile attack on
Constantinople by the
Avars (626), during the absence of the emperor and his army, said to have been repulsed by the aid of the
Virgin Mary; and by the
Heraclias (or
De extremo Chosroae Persarum regis excidio), a general survey of the exploits of Heraclius both at home and abroad down to the final overthrow of
Chosroes in 627. In his paper ''The Official History of Heraclius' Persian Campaigns'',
James Howard-Johnston makes a strong case for George of Pisida also having composed a now lost account of
Heraclius' Persian campaigns in a combination of prose and poetry. This account was apparently based on Heraclius' own dispatches from Persia to the citizens of Constantinople and was available for
Theophanes the Confessor as a basis for his Chronographia. Next he wrote
In sanctam Jesu Christi, Dei nostri resurrectionem, in which the poet exhorts Flavius Constantinus to follow in the footsteps of his father, Heraclius. There was also a didactic poem,
Hexameron or
Cosmologia (also called
Opus sex dierum seu Mundi opificium), upon the creation of the world, dedicated to Sergius;
De vanitate vitae, a treatise on the vanity of life, after the manner of
Ecclesiastes;
Contra impium Severum Antiochiae, a controversial composition against Patriarch
Severus of Antioch and his
Monophysitism; two short poems, including
In templum Deiparae Constantinopoli, in Blachernissitum upon the
resurrection of
Christ and on the recovery of the True Cross. He wrote one piece in prose,
Encomium in S. Anastasium martyrem. References in Theophanes,
Suidas, and Isaac Tzetzes, mention other lost works.
Michael Psellus later compared him with, and even prefers him to,
Euripides. George of Pisidia has been suggested as a possible author of the
Akathist Hymn to the
Theotokos. ==References==