Malalas and Procopius

179

Malalas’.39 Scott rightly pointed out that even the supposedly high-brow Procopius
could indulge in trivial tales when the mood took him, and, in Wars VIII, give serious
consideration to mythological topics, such as the Golden Fleece and the Amazons. It
is possible, moreover, that he deliberately leavened the final book of the Wars with ex-
plicit allusions to myths and earlier writers in an effort to please his public, thus draw-
ing closer to Malalas and the antiquarian interests prominent in other contemporary
writers, such as John the Lydian and Justinian/Tribonian (in the prefaces to Novels of
the 530s).40 For all this interest in the past, he shares with Malalas and others a remar-
kable confidence in his own times and its achievements, as Scott has argued, which
emerges not just from the preface to the Wars but also from his admiration (e.g.) of the
siege device invented by the Sabiri, such as had never been conceived by anyone else
of the Romans or of the Persians since men have existed’.41 The suggestion of Diether
Reinsch, that not only classicising histories and chronicles but also hagiographies were
aimed at the same audience, albeit consciously written in quite different registers, is
relevant and cogent in this context.42 Mischa Meier has similarly advocated the idea
of a rapprochement between the genres of chronicle, church history and classicising
history over the sixth century: in his analysis, classicising history, as represented by
Procopius and his successors, buckled under the strain of various disasters - notably
the Justinianic plague and the sack of Antioch in 540 - and could no longer bring
itself to enquire into the causes of events: it sufficed to attribute a divine origin to
such calamities. This may be a step too far, since Procopius nonetheless does discuss
the (geographical) origins of the plague and its development in detail, which is hardly
less than Thucydides. But the issue of causation requires a more detailed analysis than
is possible here.43
39 Scott, “Malalas and his contemporaries”, p. 71, cf. idem, “Text and context”, p. 253.
40 Scott, “Malalas and his contemporaries”, pp. 70-1,79-80, Bernardi, “Regards croises,”, pp. 53-5, Metivier,
“La creation des provinces romaines”, p. 168, cf. Treadgold, Early Byzantine Historians, pp. 189, 216 on
the public’s response. See also Jeffreys, “Malalas, Procopius”, p. 79, stressing similarities between the two
that ‘derive from the protocols of the imperial bureaucracy’; see further Kruse, “A Justinianic Debate”
more generally.
41 Procopius, De Bellis Libri VIII 11.27 on the siege engine, tr. Dewing, on which see Turquois, “Technical
Writing”, cf. 1.1.6-17, VIII 6.9. Scott, “Malalas and his contemporaries”, pp. 67-75, idem, “Byzantium in
the sixth century”, pp. 39-41, well demonstrates the confidence of Procopius, Malalas, Agathias and
others. See further Greatrex/Basso, “How to interpret Procopius' preface to the Wars”.
42 Reinsch, “Autor und Leser”, pp. 407-8, arguing that the level of language used is to show the register of
the work, thus making clear its aim and function, cf. Croke, “Uncovering Byzantium’s historiographical
audience”, on sixth-century audiences generally. Roger Scott has made a similar suggestion to us (pers.
comm.).
43 Meier, “Prokop, Agathias”, esp. pp. 286-7, 29T> 29^, cf. Cameron, Procopius, pp. 39-40, 118-19,145 and
Scott, “Malalas and his contemporaries”, p. 71, on the alleged superficiality of Procopius’ analysis. See
Procopius, De Bellis Libri II 22.2 and cf. Thucydides, Historiae II 47. Brodka, Die Geschichtsphilosophie,
ch.2, is a good discussion of causation in Procopius; according to his interpretation, Theophylact Simo-
catta at any rate had given up on causal analysis, ibid. 202. As Brodka argues, an acceptance of divine
causation does not preclude investigation of other causes; the precedent of Herodotus should be noted
in this context, where often we see both divine and human causes of events discussed (e.g. for Xerxes’
invasion of Greece). See Gould, Herodotus, pp. 70-8, Harrison, Divinity and History, ch.4, pp. 234-7.