John Malalas in the Excerpta Constantimana de Insidiis (El)

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A hypothesis is that the model of S was also in Mendoza’s possession, severely
damaged as it was, and that Mauromates waited for integrations/restoration before
copying it again. Or the scribes were asked not to disseminate the El texts until Ar-
lenius had verified their authenticity and, maybe, decided whether to publish them or
not. After all, Mendoza’s library was not always so easily accessible.27
Where did El come from? A possibility is that the luxurious, yet perhaps already
dismantled copy, was given to Mendoza by Suleyman the Magnificent, along with
other manuscripts. This is surely the provenance of another Mendoza’s codex, the Sco-
rial. Ω.1.13, with biblical content, which happens to be so close on the shelf to S (Scor.
Ω.Ι.11): can this be a coincidence?
All in all, there is still some research to do in order to shed light on the lost model
of S and its provenance.28 This, in turn, can prove relevant for a better understanding
of the composition of S (see below par. 5).
Also, the watermarks are worth an in-depth investigation, especially in regards to
the Scorialenses with the same paper (Harlfinger Chapeau 51, Sosower Chapeau 2 et
similia): they are 13 in Sosower, excluding any in-quarto manuscripts.29
5. John Malalas in S
Let us have a closer look at Malalas’ series of excerpts in S: heavily mutilated at the
beginning, it also has a long lacuna (ca. 11.5 lines) on the first folio (fol. 155 recto), which
is the first of the quire. Apparently, the text was illegible in the model, but not torn off,
otherwise we would have two lacunae (recto/verso), not one in a row. Approximately
ten lines of Thurn’s text are missing, so the text may have been slightly longer than O.
The acephalus Malalas in El could be at the beginning of the volume, i.e. before
John of Antioch: the latter is labelled no. 2 (B, fol. ιο/r) and spans exactly 6 quater-
niones (fols. lo/r-qjqv), so it is also potentially independent. Moreover, the end of
Johannes Antiochenus has neither colophon nor catchword for the next quire: maybe
Mauromates hoped to find the text to fill in-between, but it is also quite possible that
the model was dismantled and sections of it were re-arranged.
It is useful to remember that not every El text has preserved the number at the
beginning: Malalas of course has not (acephalus as it is); neither have Nicholas Dama-
scenus and Dionysios Halicarnassensis (with his Polybian insert). Each one of these
could have been number three, even though Malalas is usually assumed to be the most
probable candidate.
27 See e.g. how inaccessible Mendoza’s Themistius was to the scholar Girolamo Donzellini in Venice:
Pascale, “Tradizione Temistio”, p. 185 n. 157.
28 The status quaestionis in Sotiroudis, Untersuchungen, pp. 174-178.
29 Sosower published the watermarks of the folio-sized Greek manuscripts only, see p. 50. However, not
always his measures match the plates, see e.g. Chapeau 2, where he gives different measures than both
his own twin specimina.