Gregory Magistros

Grigor Magistros (, 'Gregory the magistros '; –1058) was an Armenian prince, linguist, scholar and Byzantine official. A layman of the princely Pahlavuni family, he was the son of the military commander Vasak Pahlavuni. After the Byzantine Empire annexed the Bagratid kingdom of Armenia, Gregory went on to serve as the governor (doux) of the province of Edessa. During his tenure he worked actively to suppress the Tondrakians, a breakaway Christian Armenian sect that the Armenian and Byzantine churches both labeled heretics. He studied both ecclesiastical and secular literature, Syriac as well as Greek. He collected all Armenian manuscripts of scientific or philosophical value that were to be found, including the works of Anania Shirakatsi, and translations from Callimachus, Andronicus of Rhodes and Olympiodorus. He translated Plato's Timaeus and Phaedo, but these translations have not been preserved. His private letters discuss a variety of topics, including contemporary politics and philosophy, and are useful as historical sources.

Biography Grigor was born into the Armenian princely Pahlavuni family. The Pahlavunis were known as the Kamsarakans prior to the eighth century and ultimately derived from the House of Karen, one of the seven great dynasties of Iran which claimed Arsacid descent. Grigor's father, Vasak Pahlavuni, was the lord of Bjni, and his paternal uncle, Vahram, was the sparapet (supreme military commander) of the Bagratid kingdom of Ani. In 1045, he accompanied Gagik II to Constantinople for negotiations with Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos regarding the fate of the Bagratid kingdom, which had been deeded to the Byzantine emperor by Gagik's predecessor. Another of his sons, Vasak Pahlavuni, was the doux of Antioch in 1078–1079.

Works Grigor Magistros had a variety of interests and wrote works in several genres. Some popular stories and myths have been preserved thanks to his recording them in his letters for didactic purposes. Grigor was one of the first poets to introduce the use of rhyme into Armenian poetry. In Hazartoghyan ar Manuche, he utilized monorhyme, which is typical of the Arabic poetic genre of qasida. All of the poem's lines end in the syllable -in, which "maximized the possibilities for grammatical diversity in Armenian and hence facilitated stylistic variation" Hazartoghyan ar Manuche was held up as a standard for Armenian long narrative poems until the end of the seventeenth century.

Grigor Magistros also wrote a commentary on the Grammar of Dionysius Thrax, a work which had earlier been translated into Armenian by authors of the Hellenizing School.