BARNES, T. D., When Did Synesius Become Bishop of Ptolemais? , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 27:3 (1986:Autumn) p.325 

When Did Synesius Become 
Bishop of Ptolemais? 

T. D. Barnes 

S HOR TL Y AFTER his consecration as bishop of Ptolemais, Synesius 
wrote to the priest Petrus requesting him to publicise the exact 
date of the approaching Easter (Ep. 13). The terms in which 

Synesius writes make it clear that this is the first Easter whose date 
he has had the duty of announcing. Moreover, since the date of 
Easter has been fixed as 19 Pharmouthi (i.e., 14 April), the year 
must be either 407 or 412.1 It follows that Synesius became bishop 
of Ptolemais either not long before Easter 407 or not long before 
Easter 412. In his classic study of the chronology of Synesius' career, 
Otto Seeck opted for the earlier date;2 but C. Lacombrade, amplifying 
the arguments of G. GrUtzmacher, seems to have convinced all 
recent scholars that Synesius was consecrated bishop during 411.3 

Since the date of Synesius' departure from Constantinople is relevant 
to that of his consecration, and an earlier article has argued that 
Synesius left Constantir..ople in 400 rather than in 402 (as Seeck and 
Lacombrade assumed), 4 the issue deserves to be reopened. The three 
complex arguments that Lacombrade advanced in favour of 411 were 
based on the need to accommodate Synesius' attested activities, trav­
els, and writings between his return from Constantinople and his 
consecration as bishop. Once the underpinning of a return in 402 has 
been removed, the explicit arguments need to stand on their own 
merits. 

The first of Lacombrade's arguments concerns Roman governors 
and the depredation of the Pentapolis by raiders from the desert. The 
"Address spoken on the occasion of the great barbarian raid, when 
Gennadius was governor and Innocentius dux" makes two chrono­
logically significant statements: Synesius is speaking in the seventh 

I See, e.g., the table in E. Schwartz, Christliche und jiidische Ostertoleln (AbhGottingen 
N. F. 8.6 [1905]) 186. 

2 "Studien zu Synesios," Philologus 52 (1894) 442-83, at 460ff. 
3 C. Lacombrade, Synesios de Cyrime, Hellime et Chretien (Paris 1951) 109ff, 249ff; cf 

G. GrUtzmacher, Synesios von Kyrene (Leipzig 1913) 131 n.2. 
4 "Synesius in Constantinople," GRBS 27 (I986) 93-112. 

325 



BARNES, T. D., When Did Synesius Become Bishop of Ptolemais? , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 27:3 (1986:Autumn) p.325 

326 WHEN DID SYNESIUS BECOME BISHOP? 

year of the province's tribulation (299D), and Innocentius replaced 
Anysius, who had been dux for a year (300A). Lacombrade argued 
that hostilities with the nomads began in January 405: hence, since 
Anysius was dux while Andronicus was governor (Ep. 77), and 
Andronicus arrived as governor at the same time as Synesius became 
bishop (Epp. 41 [57], 72), Synesius' consecration belongs to 411. The 
weak link in the argument is the assertion that marauding began in 
January 405: it is true that in a letter to his brother, written in Janu­
ary 405, Synesius speaks bitterly of a violent and apparently sudden 
raid (Ep. 132; cJ 133), but it is not clear that this marked the first 
outbreak of trouble. 

The second argument concerns a letter to one Cyrillus, whose rank 
is not stated explicitly (Ep. 12): 

Go, brother Cyrillus, to your mother the church, from which you 
were not cut off but separated for a time, which is prescribed for 
the seriousness of your offences. I think that you know clearly that 
our common father of holy memory would have done this long 
ago, if the fatal hour had not come first: for to make punishment a 
suitable length is after all a characteristic of a resolve that promises 
pardon from the start. Consider then that that sacred priest himself 
has granted you your return, and approach God with a soul be­
come pure from suffering and enjoying forgetfulness of misfortune. 
But hold in all happy memory that holy and god-loving old man 
who appointed you leader of a parish (1TPOEt,pov M)#J.OV).6 This too 
will not be displeasing to you in any way. 

Lacombrade detected an allusion to the death of Theophilus, which 
occurred on 15 October 412 (Soc. HE 7.7.1): he held that, since 
the metropolitan Synesius refers to a dead man who is his eccle­
siastical superior and who can be said to appoint bishops in Pen­
tapolis, this man must be the bishop of Alexandria, and he saw a 
pun on the name of the recently deceased bishop in Synesius' de­
scription of him as a "god-loving old man" (6Eo<fxA1i 1TpEu!3vrrw). 
The letter would thus be the latest extant of Synesius, who must 
(Lacombrade argued) have died in the winter of 412/3, since there is 
no trace of any correspondence with Cyril, the successor of The­
ophilus as patriarch of Alexandria. The deduction appears to be most 

5 The word 1rpOE8~ more naturally suggests a bishop (so G. W. H. Lampe, A Pa­
tristic Greek Lexicon [Oxford 1961] 1145 s. v.), but 1rpoE8pla is clearly used to mean 
'priesthood' in [Bas.] Comm. in Is. 103 (Migne, PG 30.285). I suspect that 8ii~ does 
not have its usual sense of 'people', but is an Atticism with the meaning 'district, 
township, village'. 



BARNES, T. D., When Did Synesius Become Bishop of Ptolemais? , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 27:3 (1986:Autumn) p.325 

T. D. BARNES 327 

attractive. Yet Lacombrade's interpretation cannot be sustained. It 
presupposes, ex hypothesi, that Synesius' correspondent is a bishop. 
But the penalty to which Synesius alludes is excommunication: the 
letter puts an end to Cyrillus' exclusion from the church, either by 
lifting the ban upon him or by shortening its originally prescribed 
duration. There is no hint that he has lost and may regain a bishop's 
see, for such decisions were the prerogative of church councils, not 
of metropolitan bishops. Since Cyrillus is to enter the church again 
after a period of penitence, Synesius is surely writing to a priest of 
Ptolemais, whom his recently deceased predecessor had punished for 
wrongdoing.6 

The third of Lacombrade's arguments also depends on the inter­
pretation of a letter, this time to Theophilus during his lifetime (Ep. 
67 [66]). Synesius writes on behalf of Alexander, a decurion of Cy­
rene who became a monk when very young. He was ordained dea­
con, then priest, and went to court, where he met and became a sup­
porter of John Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople, who con­
secrated him bishop of Basilinopolis in Bithynia.7 Alexander lost his 
see when the Synod of the Oak deposed John and his supporters 
(autumn 403). Subsequently, at the urging of Theophilus, unity was 
restored and the deposed bishops were allowed to return to their 
sees. Alexander, however, is, with Synesius, shunned as a pariah by 
the bishop's congregation, even though the third year has arrived 
since the amnesty and reconciliation. Synesius, embarrassed at the 
situation and still in his first year as bishop, writes to ask whether 
Alexander is to be treated as a bishop or not. John is now dead, and 
Theophilus had written to the bishop of Constantinople on behalf of 
the exiles, apparently before the reconciliation. 

Lacombrade puts the amnesty (which happens to be otherwise 
unattested) in 408/9, and adduces the letter as confirmation that 
Synesius became bishop in 411.8 However, the most plausible histori­
cal context for the amnesty is in the period immediately after the 
death of Eudoxia, John's implacable enemy, on 6 October 404 (Chr. 
min. 2.68).9 Moreover, Synesius refers to John in a way that suggests 

6 So, rightly and firmly, Seeck (supra n.2) 462. 
7 A. Garzya, ed., Synesii Cyrenensis epistolae (Rome 1979) 122.2, prints rii~ BLOvvwv 

BaOWOtJ1l"6AE~ and glosses "episc(opus) Basinopolitanus" without registering any var­
iant or conjecture for the otherwise unknown city: read Ba<T&.\tVOtJ1l'dAE~. 

8 Supra n.3: 210£. His Tableau synoptique (313f), however, has 406. 
9 O. Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt V (Berlin 1913) 373, 585f; J. B. 

Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire 12 (London 1923) 159 n.2; K. G. Holum, 
Theodosian Empresses (Berkeley 1982) 87. 



BARNES, T. D., When Did Synesius Become Bishop of Ptolemais? , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 27:3 (1986:Autumn) p.325 

328 WHEN DID SYNESIUS BECOME BISHOP? 

that he has only recently received news of his death, which occurred 
on 14 September 407 (Soc. HE 6.21.4): 'Iw&JlVY Tcf) IUZlCaplrn CTVO"'Ta~ 
(n,.,.aufJcu 'Yap 1Tap' 1j~v 1j """';'",,TJ 'TOV 'TEAEvrrjuaJI'T~, O'T' 1Taua 
8VU,."EJlEW Tcf) ~ CTVJla'7TOTlfJE'Tm) .... Further, there is something 
odd about the description of the bishop of Constantinople to whom 
Th h'l t " , " 80 ""'A ,,, ~ eop I us wro e: 1TpO~ TOJI IUZlCapWJI, E,."a' ICE'JI, TT(,I(OJI E'Ypa"f'C~' 

Why the uncertainty? and why is the bishop "blessed"? Atticus was 
bishop of Constantinople from early 406 to 10 October 425 (Soc. HE 
6.20.2, 7.25.21), and normal contemporary usage confined the epi­
thets IUZlCapw~ and IUZlCapl7TI~ to the dead.1o Seeck construed the 
uncertainty as showing that Synesius did not know whether Theophi­
Ius wrote to Atticus or to his predecessor Arsacius, who died on 11 
November 405 (HE 6.20.1).11 It may rather be the case that 'A'TT,,wJl 
is a mistake for 'ApualCwJI: Synesius was uncertain, not to which 
bishop of Constantinople Theophilus wrote, but of the name of the 
current bishop's predecessor. Either he guessed, and guessed wrong­
ly, that Atticus' predecessor was also called Atticus, or the name is a 
simple lapsus calami. The following chronology may thus be pro­
posed: 

405 
late 405 
406 

early 407 
14 Sept. 407 
winter 407/8 

letter of Theophilus to Arsacius 
amnesty for the supporters of John Chrysostom 
election of Synesius as bishop of Ptolemais and, after 
a delay of six months, consecration 
Ep. 13 (to Petrus on the date of Easter) 
death of John 
Ep. 67 [66] (to Theophilus on behalf of Alexander) 

The date of Synesius' consecration as bishop of Ptolemais cannot 
be regarded as certain. The arguments in favour of 411 are, to be 
sure, not so conclusive as they seem. Nevert~eless, the principal 
positive argument in favour of 406 derives from historical plausibility, 
not from any compelling deduction of a precise or technical nature, 
and it requires the hypothesis that a proper name in the text of Syne­
sius is erroneous. However, a chance exists that a papyrus or an 
inscription may settle the question definitively by supplying an exact 

10 L. Dinneen, Titles oj Address in Christian Greek Epistolography to A.D. 527 (= Pa­
tristic Studies 18 [Washington, D.C., 1929]) 8Ur. She cites the passage under discussion 
as the only example of J.Ul1(~ applied to the living (except in the phrase lJ J.UlKJipu.) 
after Athanasius. 

11 Seeck (supra n.2) 461. 



BARNES, T. D., When Did Synesius Become Bishop of Ptolemais? , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 27:3 (1986:Autumn) p.325 

T. D. BARNES 329 

date for one of the governors or duces with whom Synesius dealt as 
bishop.12 

THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 

April, 1986 

12 Viz., the governors Gennadius (Ep. 73; Catastasis I), Andronicus (Epp. 41 [57], 
42 [58], 72f, 77, 79, 90), and Cleodonius (Ep. 39 [42]), and the duces Anysius (Epp. 
6, 14,37, 77f, 94; Cat. I), Innocentius (Cat. I), and Marcellinus (Ep. 62). For none of 
these men does PLRE II (I980) register any evidence outside Synesius. On Synesius 
as bishop and the province, C. H. Coster, "Synesius, a 'Curialis' in the Time of the 
Emperor Arcadius," Byzantion 15 (I94O-41) 10-38, reprinted in his Late Roman 
Studies (Cambridge [Mass.] 1968) 145-82; J. Vogt, "Synesios gegen Andronikos: Der 
philosophische Bischof in der Krisis," in Adel und Kirche, G. Tellenbach zum 65. Ge­
burtstag (Freiburg 1968) 15-25; R. G. Goodchild, "Synesius of Cyrene: Bishop of 
Ptolemais," Libyan Studies, ed. J. Reynolds (London 1976) 239-54; W. Liebeschuetz, 
"Synesius and Municipal Politics of Cyrenaica in the 5th Century A. D.," Byzantion 55 
(1985) 146-64. 

I am most grateful to Joyce Reynolds for helpful advice on the Libyan background of 
Synesius.