John Malalas as a source for
John of Antioch’s Historia Chronike.
The evidence of the Excerpta historica
Constantiniana
Umberto Roberto

Abstract John Malalas is a prime source for John of Antioch, whose Historia Chronike was
written in Constantinople at the beginning of the 7th century. From John Malalas, John of
Antioch derives the first part of his work, i.e. the archaiologia and description of the Trojan War.
With regard to this chronological section, John of Antioch’s fragments are also highly useful
in providing a better knowledge of Malalas’s text. Although in the main section on Roman
Republican History, John of Antioch’s interests differ from those of Malalas, he continues to use
the latter as a source for the history of the Roman Empire in the Historia Chronike, in particular
for scattered reports on the origins of Christianity and the historical background in which it
developed. After the reign of Trajan, no traces of Malalas are found among known fragments
of John of Antioch.

i. The Excerpta Constantiniana,
John of Antioch and John Malalas
Before undertaking an analysis of the relationship between John of Antioch and John
Malalas, I would like to restate briefly my position on the date and structure of John
of Antioch’s work. John of Antioch is the author of a Christian universal chronicle,
the Ιστορία χρονική, that we possess only in fragments. These texts come from a
complex textual tradition based on different groups of fragments. The most reliable of
them, according to scholars of the past - and also those scholars who have dealt with
the “Johanneische-Frage” in recent years - is that of the Excerpta historica Constan-
tinianaCVti\s is a collection of historical texts produced in Constantinople during the
middle of the tenth century (945-959) at the request of Constantine VII. Under the
supervision of the emperor, a group of scholars was entrusted with the task of reading
manuscripts of ancient and late antique historians and excerpting texts dealing with
certain topics. It is highly probable that the emperor himself drew up the list of the
historians to be excerpted. In the end, 53 topics were compiled in an unknown number