74

Catherine Saliou

salem (VIII 23)70. The place-name “Cherubim”71 is connected with the Jewish war of
66-70 and the third destruction of Jerusalem, according to the same canonical list
attributed by Malalas to Eusebius of Caesarea (X 45).72 73
The identification of these narrative cycles, which leads one to suspect fiction even
in the cases which would seem plausible, doesn’t exclude that Malalas uses also other
more “historical” or more “reliable” sources, like lists of buildings or extracts of proper
chronicles or consulariaß What can be observed, in any event, is the fact that in the
composition of the history of each reign Malalas combines the extracts of these cycles
and some information derived from other sources. For instance, in the account of
Tiberius’ reign, Malalas tells, as we have seen, a lengthy story about the extension of
the city wall and other achievements of Tiberius in Antioch.74 After that he relates the
foundation of Tiberias in Judaea and the foundation of the Cappadocia as a Roman
province.75 At the end of the chapter he returns to Antioch, and mentions the burning
down of the Bouleuterion, introducing his account by the words “during Tiberius’
time”.76 This account must derive from another source, maybe a list of the big fires in
the city, or a “cycle of the Bouleuterion”. Its value as a factual source must be appreci-
ated in a different way than that of the Wall tale.
A complete analysis of the text is required, but the present demonstration is suf-
ficient to draw the following tentative conclusion. It is no longer possible to say that
“the chronicle is a fundamental and generally reliable source for the construction
of Antioch”. I think, however, that the chronicle is indeed a fundamental source of
knowledge of the urban landscape of Antioch between 474 and ca 530 and also, more
generally, for the study of story-telling and narrativity relating to urban space in Late
Antiquity. The aim - or one of the aims - to these urban tales may be in fact to answer
a simple question: how a Greek Syrian City can be Roman? In this way Malalas may
be a very important source for the construction of a Roman provincial identity.
Bibliography
Primary sources
Excerpta de Insidiis, ed. C. de Boor, Berlin 1905.
John Malalas, loannis Malalae chronographia, ed. H. Thurn {Corpusfontium historiae byzantinae 35),
Berlin/New York 2000.
Theophanes, Theophanis Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, Leipzig 1883-1885.
70 See above, fn. 49.
71 See above, fn 50.
72 Regarding Jerusalem and the Temple in Malalas’ History, cf. Beaucamp, “Le passe biblique et I’histoire
juive. La version de Jean Malalas”, pp. 29-30.
73 Regarding these various categories of texts, cf. Burgess/Kulikowski, Mosaics of time I. A historical intro-
duction to the chronicle genre from its origins to the high Middle Ages.
74 X 8-10, p. 177,1. n-p. 178,1. 62.
75 X10, p. 178,11. 63-67.
76 X10, p. 179,11. 69-73.