The Historiographical Position of John Malalas

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also be used to denote the setting forth or the exposition of such a chronology. By
extension therefrom, the word came to connote an entire work that set out such a
chronology or chronologies (a usage that it would seem derives from Eratosthenes’
famous chronological history of the same title - Περί χρονογραφιών, sometimes
just called Χρονογραφίαί). The word was also used as a title by Julius Africanus and
George Syncellus for their compendious chronological analyses, and it may also have
been used by Eusebius for the similarly constructed volume that he conceived as a
preface to his more famous Chronici canones.^ None of these works with the title of
Χρονογραφία was a chronicle. Indeed the only text to use the title Χρονογραφία
for something that we can recognize as generically a chronicle is the historical work
of Theophanes. For the most part, this is a chronicle according to the observable rules
of the ancient genre, but that is not the reason Theophanes chose the title. On the
contrary, because he was continuing the work of George Syncellus, who had used
χρονογραφία in the title, and to describe, his own work, Theophanes appropriated
his predecessor’s usage even while composing a continuation that largely obeyed the
rules of a very different genre.6 7
Issues of nomenclature do not end there, however. If - in the thousand years bet-
ween Eratosthenes and Syncellus - the word χρονογραφία primarily signified a
work with chronological’ focus, there also certainly existed contexts in which it could
simply and loosely mean ‘history’ (histoire, storia, Geschichte). Malalas himself uses
χρονογραφία in this loose way to refer to both the Philosophical History of Porphyry
and the Pentateuch (2.18.52-3 and 3.14.6). Later, the Suda used χρονογραφία to de-
scribe Eunapius’ classicizing narrative history, which, given the latter author’s vocal
distaste for chronology, he would surely have taken as an insult.8 Χρονογραφία is
similarly used as a title in Leo Grammaticus’ version of the history of Symeon the
Logothete, as well as by Ps-Symeon, Joel, and Michael Psellus, and finally as the title
of John Scylitzes’ Σύνοψις Ιστοριών in the title of Scylitzes Continuatus. Except for
Leo and Ps-Symeon, all of these are full-blown narrative histories, and not anna-
listic chronicles in the manner of the ancient genre. Taken in the broadest context,
χρονογραφία it is not a very common word in Greek, but it and its relatives, such as
χρονογράφεlov, χρονογραφικόν, and χρονογραφίαν, are regularly attached to a
wide variety of historical works and chronological expositions, from lists of patriarchs
and emperors to fully-fledged classicizing histories, to the historical books of the Old
Testament.9 Theophanes is the only chronicler (in the ancient sense of the genre) who
called his work a χρονογραφία, while Eusebius is the only chronicler whose work
was later called a χρονογραφία.10 The point of this is not trivial. On the contrary,
6 See Burgess/Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, pp. 29-30, 61,116-19,123-4, 227-30, 278-9,337-8.
7 See Burgess/Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, pp. 21,30, 227-8, 230-2, 236.
8 See Burgess/Kulikowski, Mosaics of Time, p. 286, with 178, 285,358.
9 For its relative rarity, note that it produces fewer than 100 hits on TLG, if one discounts the many du-
plicates.
10 Though only by Epiphanius in his De mensuris etponderibus, έν χρονογραφίαις Ευσεβίου καί των