A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

8. ANAGNOSTES (Ἀναγνώστης) or LECTOR, the READER, an ecclesiastical historian, generally supposed to have written in the reign of the emperor Justin I., or his successor Justinian I. Nothing of his personal history is known, except that he held the subordinate ecclesiastical post of reader at Constantinople, and, as Suidas states, in the great church (Suidas, s. v.). Suidas states that he brought down his history to the time of Justinian I. : and though nothing in the extant fragments of his works leads us to a later time than the accession of Justin I., we may not unreasonably admit the correctness of Suidas' statement, so far as to place the composition of the history of Theodore in the reign of Justinian. Theodore is quoted by Joannes Damascenus and by Theophanes, and in the Acta of the second Nicene (seventh (General Council), all in the eighth century.