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R.W. Burgess, Michael Kulikowski

had slipped from a properly literary endeavor resulting in the sort of work that could
be called a “chronicle” to simple subliterary jottings that could be assembled and col-
lected (whether in the past or by editors in the twentieth century). As a result we can
say that while the Byzantines were still engaged in chronicling throughout their his-
tory, they were not writing chronicles in the way that they did before the fifth century
Viewed in this light, Eusebius marks both the beginning and the end of the Helle-
nistic-style Christian chronicle. In Greek, at least, his initiative was therefore a glorious
failure. There is no further evidence for the composition of anything like pre-Eusebian
or Eusebian chronicles after his Chronici canones, except as continuations of that work.
Indeed, as has already been noted, it would seem to be the case that intact copies of his
text did not survive the fourth century, and that later copies were edited and simplified.
Works like the Chronicon pasch ale and the Chronographia of Theophanes are throw-
backs, atypical outliers separated by decades and centuries from the main tradition
of Greek chronicles. The Chronici canones would seem to have been regarded as the
final word in such texts, and so while later writers argued over and reworked Eusebius’
chronologies of the period before Christ, the rest of his text appears to have stood as
the final word in literary Greek chronicles, and we can find evidence for its influence
throughout Greek historiography right down to the thirteenth century and beyond.
But that conclusion also leaves a question: if Malalas isn’t a chronicle, what is it?
Byzantinists seem to have devised their own genre to describe works like the one
written by Malalas: “world chronicle” (sometimes shortened to just “chronicle”). These
so-called “world chronicles” are abbreviated narrative histories beginning from the
Creation of the World, works such as those of John of Antioch, George the Monk,
Nicephorus, Symeon the Logothete, Ps-Symeon, Cedrenus, Glycas, and Zonaras.
None of these histories shares any similarity with the ancient genre of the chronicle
apart from brevity, in which respect they are similar to Malalas. And yet Byzantinists
also regularly classify the Chronographia Golenischevensis and the Chronographia Sca-
ligeriana as “world chronicles” (as can be seen from the bibliography); moreover a
summary account such as the entry on “Chronicle” in the ODB goes further, including
in its definition of chronicles such compendia of regnal years of kings, emperors, and
patriarchs as Nicephorus’ Χρονογραφικόν σύντομον, none of which bear a gene-
ric resemblance to either ancient chronicles or writers like Malalas or George the
Monk. Other modern definitions we have seen seem equally eclectic. These seeming
contradictions leave us unsure about what Byzantinists consider to be the defining
characteristics of a so-called “world chronicle” or whether such defining characteristics
have ever been properly postulated. Such problems of defining genre are exactly those
which we have confronted in our own work, but given that we have attempted to avoid
dictating terminology to other ancient historians, we see even less value in doing so to
Byzantinists. We would instead prefer to conclude with some suggestions about where
one can reasonably look for Malalas’ inspirations and intellectual heritage.
In order to understand what Malalas wrote we must look at earlier histories not
later ones. Surprisingly enough, the general trends in Christian historiography over