PREFACE. XXVII persons who took part in it have been either wilfully or ignorantly corrupted by him, and that the historical se- quence of the events which took place during that period has been destroyed. The first account of George's mar- tyrdom is said to have been written by his servant Pasi- krates,' flasıxpáns, but it has been considered to be un- trustworthy by many. However this may be, it is certain that both Theodosius, Bishop of Jerusalem about A. D. 450, and Theodotus, Bishop of Ancyra, who lived in the early part of the Vth century, used and accepted the account of the martyrdom of George said to have been written by him. If, however, the encomiums attributed to Theodosius and Theodotus are not genuine, though I see no reason why they should not be, they were probably written about a century later. A Syriac version of the work of Pasikrates existed in the VIth century, and it has so much in common with the Coptic account of A published in this book, that I originally intended to publish it side by side with the Coptic text, edited from three MSS. in the British Museum, and a Nestorian Syriac MS. in the 1 For the Greek and Latin texts see Acta Sanctorum, Appendix d April 23; Lipomann, De Vitis Sanctorum, ii April 23; and Ray- audus, S. Georgio Cappadoce megalomartyre, viii, p. 335 sqq. See iso the list of Greek writers on S. George in Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, ix, pp. 79, 80. 2 See Wright, Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. in the British Museum, p. 1087. For a summary of the contents of the Syriac version see Dillmann, Über die apokryphen Märtyrergeschichten des Cyriacus mit Julilta und des Georgius, pp. 353-356, in the Sitzungsberichte der Kön. Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, xxiii. Digitized by Microsoft®
