John, who appears possibly, if not at all certainly, to have had the surname of Doxopater, and to have been sometimes designated by it, appears also to have been a monk. He must (on his own authority) have observed the virtue of Poverty much better than some of his fellows, and few of them can have more avoided the vice of laziness. His voluminous works devoted to Rhetoric are ranged by Walz[271] under eleven titles: to wit, Prolegomena and Homilies on the Progymnasmata of Aphthonius, General Prolegomena to Rhetoric, Commentaries on the States, Inventions and Ideas of Hermogenes, Epideictic speeches on the Horse and against the Saracens, a destructive discussion of the myth of Prometheus, a “Basileios” and a “Politikon.” These works contain some personal details and complaints, which, if he subsequently became Patriarch of Constantinople, were heard by Fortune in her less savage mood; and he seems to have busied himself with theology and history, as well as rhetoric. But it is very difficult to place either his patriarchate, or consequently his life, chronologically. He might have been the John Glycas who held the dignity from 1316 to 1320, when he abdicated; but Glycas seems to have been married. So perhaps he was John Camater, an earlier occupant (under the Latin Empire) of the see in 1204. Footnote 271: Vol. vi. p. 5 _sq._ All this, it will be seen, is a rather unsubstantial pageant; but John’s works are solid enough. Even the _Prolegomena_ (taking them as his) of Doxopater, and the _Commentaries on the Ideas_ (to which alone we have access), fill five hundred pages. It is in the latter that we are to look for anything touching our subject. They are rather wide-ranging, to which character of theirs we doubtless owe the Longinian citation.