Pachymeres was born at Nicaea, in Bithynia, where his father had taken refuge after the capture of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204.

Pachymeres was also the author of rhetorical exercises on philosophical themes; of a Quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy), valuable for the history of music and astronomy in the Middle Ages; a general sketch of Aristotelian philosophy; a paraphrase of the speeches and letters of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; poems, including an autobiography; and a description of the square of the Augustaeum, and the column erected by Justinian in the church of Hagia Sophia to commemorate his victories over the Persians.

[2][1] The History was first published in print by I. Bekker (1835) in the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae; also by J. P. Migne, in Patrologia Graeca (vol.

cxliii, cxliv); for editions of the minor works see Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897).

An English translation of Books I and II (up to the recovery of Constantinople in 1261), with commentary, exists in the form of a Ph.D. thesis by Nathan John Cassidy held in the Reid Library of the University of Western Australia.