Saint saint Priscus

Priscus of Panium was an Eastern Roman diplomat and Greek historian and rhetorician (or sophist). Priscus was born in Panion, in Thrace, between 410 and 420 AD. In 448/449 AD, he accompanied Maximinus, the head of the Byzantine embassy representing Emperor Theodosius II (r. 402–450), on a diplomatic mission to the court of Attila the Hun. While Priscus was there, he met and conversed with a Greek merchant, dressed in "Scythian" (or Hunnic) fashion, who had been captured eight years earlier (c. 441–442) when the city of Viminacium on the Danube, east of modern Belgrade, was sacked by the Huns. The trader explained to Priscus that after the sack of Viminacium, he was a slave of Onegesius, a Hunnic nobleman, but obtained his freedom and chose to settle among the Huns. Priscus ultimately engaged in a debate with the Greek defector regarding the qualities of life and justice in both the Byzantine Empire and in barbarian kingdoms. After an interlude in Rome, Priscus traveled to Alexandria and the Thebaid in Egypt. He last appeared in the East, circa 456, attached to the staff of Euphemios as Emperor Marcian's (r. 450–457) magister officiorum. He died after 472 AD. Priscus was the author of an eight-volume historical work written in Greek and known as the History of Byzantium (Greek: Ἱστορία Βυζαντιακή), though that was probably not the original title. When it was complete, the History probably covered the period from the accession of Attila the Hun to the accession of Emperor Zeno (r. 474–475), or from 433 to 474 AD, but Priscus' work currently survives only in fragments. It was very influential in the Byzantine Empire: it was used in the Excerpta de Legationibus of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 913–959), as well as by authors such as Evagrius Scholasticus, Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and the author of the Souda.