The manuscript transmissionof Malalas’ chronicle reconsidered 141
viewed as versions of a core text, but which are the drafts and which a definitive autho-
rial version is disputed, as is the identity of the author. I refer to the so-called Synopsis
Sathas published by Sathas in 1894 from the fourteenth-century Venice, Biblioteca
Marciana, Gr. 407 (and mistakenly attributed to Theodoros Skoutariotes, metropolitan
of Kyzikos from 1277-83), the Chronica on the verge of publication by Raimondo Tocci
from thirteenth- or fourteenth-century Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
Vat. gr. 1889 and the as yet unpublished text in the sixteenth-century Athonite manu-
script, Hagion Oros 3758 (Dionysiou 224), to which attention was drawn by Lambros
in 1917, perhaps to be published in the near future by Kostas Zafeiris.11 One is left
considering that in the late Palaeologan period any gentleman who wished to have a
world history in his private library set about creating his own. Perhaps this could be
said of the tenth century too; could it also be said of the sixth?
Nor is it unusual to be aware of a text that is no longer independently extant but
whose ghostly tracks can be followed through a host of common passages found in
later writings: I think of the Epitome of Trajanos Patrikios from the seventh century
that arguably hides behind the Logothete chronicle,12 or the common source that can
be traced in Manasses, Zonaras and the Synopsis Sathas.13 One might say that common
sources and - even better - lost common sources, are the life-blood of critical editions
of Byzantine historiographical texts, let alone of Byzantine Quellenforschung. This tells
us something about editorial attitudes to the nature of Byzantine historical writing,
particularly non-classicizing historiographical writing.
Nor is it even particularly unusual to find that the witnesses to a text have tran-
scended linguistic barriers, that is, have been translated - and then continue to remain
relevant to a modern editor. I think here, somewhat convolutedly, of what has come to
be known as Theophanes’ Eastern Source,14 the “Eastern Source” having been identi-
fied as Theophilus of Edessa (who lived perhaps between 695 and 785), although not
everyone is convinced by this identification. Written in Syriac, possibly in Bagdad and
conveyed in a Greek version to Constantinople, this text has to be reconstructed as
the common source of historians who used Arabic as well as Syriac,15 but can be used
to elucidate obscurities in Theophanes. There is also the transmission of Manasses’
Synopsis Chronike into Bulgarian, where the vagaries of the fourteenth-century Bul-
garian version can shed a little light on the stages of Manasses’ own text.16 Thus the
path taken by subsequent witnesses to Malalas’ sixth-century text is far from unique.
But one might say that modern editors do not always know how to react to this sort
of material.
11 Zafeiris, “Authorship”, pp. 254-55.
12 Karpozilos, Βυζαντινοί ιστορικοί, vol. 2, pp. 394-95.
13 Lampsidis, “Στίχοι”, p. 484.
14 As discussed in Mango/Scott, Theophanes, pp. Ixxxii-lxxxvii.
15 As discussed in Hoyland, Theophilus.
16 Manasses, Synopsis chronike, ed. Lampsides, pp. clvii-clviii. The status of the Bulgarian translation is
discussed further in forthcoming translation by Linda Yuretich in the series Translated Texts for By-
zantinists.