Zacharias composed several works in
Greek, among which is an
ecclesiastical history that was probably completed towards the end of the 5th century. The document, dedicated to Eupraxius, a dignitary, contains valuable historical material and describes the time period from 451 to 491. It was used by
Evagrius Scholasticus for his own history. Zacharias also composed three biographies of
Monophysitic clergymen who he had met personally: the above-mentioned Severus,
Peter the Iberian and the Egyptian monk Isaiah the Younger. The biographies have been preserved with varying quality. Zacharias also wrote several polemic works, e.g. against the philosopher
Ammonius Hermiae and against the
Manichaeans.
Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor While all original versions of Zacharias's ecclesiastical histories were later lost, a truncated and revised
Syriac version was preserved, by an author believed to have been a Monophysite monk from
Amida. This anonymous author, who has been commonly known as
Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor, incorporated it in
Historia Miscellanea, a 12-book compilation of
ecclesiastical histories. Pseudo-Zacharias's edition of Zacharias's ecclesiastical history, constituting books 3–6, is also usually known as
Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor. The first English translation of
Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor was not published until in 1899 under the title
The Syriac Chronicle by F. J. Hamilton and E. W. Brooks. It was part of a five-volume series,
Byzantine Texts, edited by
J. B. Bury. A new English translation was published by
Liverpool University Press in 2011 under the title
The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: Church and War in Late Antiquity. Edited by Geoffrey Greatrex and translated into English by Robert R. Phenix and
Cornelia B. Horn, it consists of a translation of books 3-12 of
Historia Miscellanea; a second volume is planned for the translation of books 1–2. ==Literature==