John Malalas: from computation to narration

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governor of Palestine, which resembles a revised version of the letter from Pliny to
Trajan. He places within the same period the earthquake in Antioch, that resulted in
the reconstructions funded by the emperor, the martyr of Ignatius, guilty of having
inveighed the emperor and of the persecution of the Christians in Antioch, with the
enlightening episode of the five Christian women whose ashes, mixed with bronze,
became successively cauldrons and statues. Even if the narrative thread sometimes
matches some of Eusebius’ notices (the creation of the province of Dacia and the war
against the Osroenes placed next to year 5 of the reign, Ignatius’ and Pliny’s letters next
to year 10 or 11, the creation of the province of Mesopotamia and the earthquake in
Antioch next to year 16), it is obvious that Malalas’ narration does not follow anymore
the thread of the Canones. The sequence of events is totally disrupted and all is concen-
trated around the presence of Trajan in Antioch, while it is not even worth an entry in
Eusebius. Far more than Arrian, whom Malalas cites as his source for the war against
the Persians, it is presumably an Antiochian source which is used for this part of the
chapter. This source reinterprets both the chronology and the nature of the events to
build this lively story, full of anecdotes, details, and miracles. Its imprint can even be
found in the dating system used. Trajan’s expedition is dated to the twelfth year of
the reign (which doesn’t match anything in Eusebius), but with an additional detail:
Trajan left Rome in October -hyperberetaios.10 The year Trajan arrived in Antioch is
not specified, but it is said to have occurred “in the month of audynaws-^vm^xy, the
7th, a Thursday, in the 4th hour of the day”. The earthquake happened “on the month
of ö7>c//özo5-December, the 13th, a Sunday, after the singing of the rooster, on year 164
according to the era of Antioch, two years after the arrival of the divine emperor Tra-
jan in the East”. These disseminated elements punctuating chapters 3 to 12 of Book
XI highlight the continuity in the use of this new source, most probably Domninus,
whom Malalas cites at the end of the chapter on Trajan’s arrival in Antioch.20 21
We thus see that Malalas’ narration uses a specific chronological structure, here a
version of Eusebius’ Chronicle used in a flexible way, on which he grafts, developments
of various length coming from other sources in the form of a notice or synchronism.
These inserts sometimes substitute for the main source to structure momentarily the
chronology, at the risk of introducing inconsistencies in the computation of the years.
But it is likely that, despite the title retained for his work, the Antiochian chronicler
was not interested in writing a literal chronography.

20 Malalas XI3.
21 Jeffreys, “Malalas’ sources”, pp. 178-179. From similar evidence, we can assume that Malalas used the
same kind of sources for Hadrian’s reign.