Son of Hesychius the physician; the man surnamed Psychristus ["Chilly"], from the exarchy of Damascus. His father went to Rhodes, then to Drepanon, the one in Argos [Myth, Place];[1] and when he came there he married the woman who bore Jacob to him. Then he left his wife and the child and spent 19 years abroad in Alexandria and Italy and seemed to be no longer living. Therefore Jacob's mother married a second husband. When she had two [male] children and a daughter, the man who married her passed away. But Hesychius went up to Constantinople; and when Jacob learned this, he came to him. And then he began his education and served as a physician at Constantinople during the reign of the emperor Leo.[2]