The Historiographical Position of John Malalas

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2. Chronicles. As discussed above, chronicles are works that set forth a long period
of history, briefly and in an annalistic manner, with the events of each year being
the basic historical unit and organized in chronological order. They usually have a
minimum of narrative intrusion. This results in a paratactic structure that appears
to coordinate or correlate unrelated events of vastly differing importance, and that
can also fail to make explicit important connections that might exist between and
among a series of events. Individual years are marked off from one another by
at least one overarching chronological system (such as Olympiads, consuls, reg-
nal years, anni mundi, anni domini, or indictions) and individual entries often in-
clude detailed chronological indicators. Historical works that do not manifest an
overarching interest in chronology cannot be called chronicles. Consularia are a
sub-genre of chronicles. Such works are the Chronicon pasch ale (which includes
many non-chronicle components) and the Chronographia of Theophanes (who in
many ways was nevertheless laying the groundwork for the universal breviarium
described below by expanding the chronicle’s basic annalistic form and in his use
of non-chronicle sources). The short chronicles and “chroniclizing” notes found in
the so-called Kleinchroniken are also a sub-genre, though a collection of such notes
cannot be considered as a single work called a “chronicle”.
3. Chronographs. Works that reduce history to a collection of lists, chiefly of Old
Testament patriarchs and judges, Hellenistic kings, Roman emperors, and later
even Christian patriarchs. One could therefore consider a single, unannotated list,
such as of Roman or Byzantine emperors, as a kind of proto-chronograph. In such
works, accounts of the Old Testament are often more detailed than the other lists,
amounting to almost an historical precis, and other historical and geographical
material can also appear. Such works include the Liber generationis (= Συναγωγή
χρόνων καί ετών από κτίσεως κόσμου έως τής ένεστώσης ή μέρας), Chro-
nographia Golenischevensis, Chronographia Scaligeriana, and Χρονογραφεΐον
σύντομον, of which the latter is the most basic form of this kind of work.
4. Annotated Chronographs. Chronographs in which the author analyses and dis-
cusses the chronologies presented in the above-mentioned regnal lists, without
offering the detailed year by year accounts of that history that one finds in a chron-
icle. Such works are Julius Africanus’ Chronographiae and Eusebius’ Chronographia,
as well as the much later Ecloga chronographica of Syncellus.
Nos. 3 and 4 above are the historical works that are closest to chronicles because they
are fundamentally interested in chronology. On the other hand, the following two
genres reveal no real interest in chronology, though that does not preclude individual
discussions or analyses of chronological points or problems.
5. Universal breviaria. Universal histories greatly reduced in size and coverage from
their Hellenistic forebears, as discussed above. They graft the history of the Old
and New Testaments onto the standard account of Greek and Roman history. In
many ways these can be regarded simply as a compact narrative version of his-