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Elizabeth Jeffreys

lacked the durability of parchment and would also have been more liable to wear and
tear when in codex form, a papyrus codex would presumably have been only a fraction
of the cost of parchment. Indeed, the Golenischev scraps of the Alexandrian World
chronicle witness to a contemporary late sixth-century illustrated chronographic text
on papyrus.30 Are relatively cheap copies on papyrus a solution to all the variant end-
ings to Malalas?
Cosmas Indicopleustes, who devised his Christian Topography in Alexandria in
the mid-sixth century, also offers something of a parallel. The Christian Topography is
predicated on a large number of explanatory illustrations, and - like Malalas’ text - was
revised in a second edition; this was also illustrated. This was undoubtedly a costly en-
terprise. Cosmas claims initially that he was writing at the behest of a certain Pamphi-
los, so probably here was a patron with all that might be implied about contributions
to expenses. Cosmas also comments later that he was responding to the reactions of a
group of readers, who perhaps also made contributions to the physical construction of
the book.31 Unlike the case of Malalas, we cannot conjecture how many copies Cosmas
had made beyond the two demanded for the editions he indicates; but we can say that
he would have confronted the cost of elaborate book production at least twice in his
sixth-century writing life. Again this would have been less extraordinary had the book
been on papyrus rather than parchment, although, of course, the surviving copies are
on parchment. Maya Kominko has recently re-argued the case that the three copies
which survive from later centuries can be accepted as reasonable representations of
Cosmas’ original images.32
There is no doubt that Cosmas owned - was master of - the text that goes under
his name. However, as we move direction again, can we say the same for Malalas and
his enkyklion or epitome? Was there ever an author who “owned” that text? A case could
be made that any late antique or medieval manuscript which contains annalistic or
chronicle material should simply be treated as a contribution to the intellectual life of
the period from which its copyist comes, and interpreted as such without reference to
the individual who picked up a pen to inscribe the text’s words. Let me revert to the
exact words of the sentence in the Synopsis Sathas to which I referred just now: “I assert
that I am so far from taking personal pride in this narrative and from boasting of its
great discoveries that I permit any one who wishes to call himself the book’s father”
(in Kostas Zafeiris’ translation).33 This thirteenth-century disclaimer of ownership is
in direct descent from the sentiments in the prologue to Malalas’ text. Let me take
30 See Burgess/Dijkstra, “The ‘Alexandrian World Chronicle’”.
31 Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia Christiana, ed. Wolska-Conus, 2.1 (Pamphilos), 7.1 (Anastasios). It
is also possible, however, that the readers who urged Kosmas on are no more than a conventional device,
a rhetorical modesty topos; Kominko, World of Kosmas, pp. 14-15.
32 Kominko, World of Kosmas.
33 Zafeiris, “Authorship”, p. 259. Synopsis Chronike, ed. Sathas, p. 3, lines 6-10: Εγώ δ’ άλλα τοσούτον
άπισχυρίζομαι, μή φιλοτιμία τήν διήγησιν τούτην ποιήσασθαι καί επί τοΐς ίστορουμένοις
καί μέγα τι φρόνησαι, ότι παραχωρώ τώ βουλομένω πατέρα λέγειν τής βίβλου ον
βούλεται.