 The title of a recently published manuscript, dated to the 13th or 14th century and containing a Prior Analytics commentary, suggests that Elias, who is named as the author of the commentary, once held the office of prefect in the Byzantine empire. In the Novellae of Justinian, a prefect by the name of Elias is indeed mentioned (Novel. CLIII, dated 12 December 541; cf. Westerink 1961). Since the name Elias was rare in secular circles at the time, Westerink proposes that unless evidence to the contrary emerges our commentator and the prefect should be considered identical. A (praetorian or urban) prefect in the late Roman Empire was, as direct representative of the emperor, the highest civilian administrator of a region or city (most importantly Rome or Constantinople). If our commentator really held such an illustrious office, presumably after he had established himself as professor of philosophy (cf. the life of Themistius), he most likely also came from a high-ranking family of nobles. Unfortunately, apart from the scant evidence found in the late manuscripts of the extant commentaries nothing further is known about a philosopher or prefect by the name of Elias. A fairly comprehensive Byzantine list of commentators on Porphyry and Aristotle does not know of any philosopher by that name, nor do Photius (9th c. Byzantine scholar) and the author of the Suda, a 10th c. encyclopedia. A closer look at the manuscript tradition reveals that the texts now attributed to Elias circulated as anonymous manuscripts for a considerable time, meaning that the attribution to one “Elias” is a much later addition. Given that there is nothing explicitly Christian about these works (there are no references to the Bible, but the text abounds with references to pagan philosophers and literary figures), and given that we find an explicit avowal of doctrines that are quite obviously at variance with Christianity (e.g. that a philosopher must strive to imitate the sun; that the world is eternal), it is possible to adopt a more skeptical position (cf. Wildberg 1990). That is to say, the suspicion arises that the original author may not have been Christian at all, but a latter-day pagan who, like Olympiodorus, taught Greek philosophy to a Christian audience. In that case, the attribution of these commentaries to some “Elias” may well have been motivated by monastic scribes who sought to justify copying these pagan philosophical texts by inventing a good Christian name for their author. Alternatively, if the author was indeed the Christian prefect Elias, as Westerink suggests, we are invited to modify our preconceptions about the possibility of pagan philosophical discourse within the Christian culture of the Byzantine empire. In either case, the commentaries testify to the vitality and importance of pagan philosophy and learning in the mid- or late 6th century CE.