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sections of the Excerpta Constantini, and the Wiener Troica and Hypothesis to the
Odyssey were markedly different from the rest of the corpus. The second element of
his solution was to assign a “genuine” status to the one and a “spurious” status to the
other, and not vice versa. The third element was his idea that the fragments at the end
of the Excerpta Constantini belong to one and the same work from which the initial
sections of the collection and the rest of the material marked as green in Illustration
2 derive. In other words, he postulated that all the material marked green in Illust-
ration 2 derives from one and the same work and believed that the corpus of John of
Antioch should contain all of this material. As far as the red sections in Illustration 2
are concerned, he did not believe that they derived from a single work but considered
them a compilation from various sources made by the anonymous scholars employed
by Constantine Porphyrogenetos.
If we follow Patzig’s hypothesis, the “Minimalbestand” of John of Antioch, if one
wishes to apply the term advocated by Van Nuffelen, is what is marked green in Il-
lustration 2.
II2 Sotiriadis’ Solution
Interestingly enough, Patzig and Sotiriadis did not disagree with regard to the ques-
tion of where to draw the dividing line through the “Maximalbestand”. They disagreed
only on the question of which of the two parts should be considered “genuine” and
which “spurious”. Patzig’s and Sotiriadis’ solutions correspond to each other like a
negative and a positive image of one and the same object: what Sotiriadis believed to
be green was red for Patzig and vice versa, see Illustration 3. They also concurred in the
opinion that the “Maximalbestand” of “John of Antioch” comprised two halves that
were incompatible with each other in the sense that they cannot possibly derive from
one and the same work. Sotiriadis, just like Patzig, was unaware of the Iviron fragment,
but he believed that his “John of Antioch”, i. e. the green sections in Illustration 3, do
reflect some previous compilation and were not, as Patzig believed, simply put together
from various sources by the scholars working for Constantine Porphyrogennetos.
If we follow Sotiriadis, the “Minimalbestand” of John of Antioch would amount to
what is marked green in Illustration 3.
II.j The discovery of the Iviron Fragment
Without rehearsing individual arguments advanced by Patzig, Sotiriadis and de
Boor7 and subsequently corroborated by Sotiroudis, it is safe to conclude that during
the nineteenth and earlier twentieth century there was a consensus among scholars
regarding the need to draw a dividing line through the “Maximalbestand”, and, save
for a few details, also regarding the question of where to draw it. However, given
7 De Boor, “Zu den Excerptsammlungen des Konstantin Porphyrogennetos”; “Zu lohannes Antioche-
nus”; “Zu lohannes Antiochenus”.