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Umberto Roberto

of volumes. Today we are in possession of the following volumes: two volumes of the
Excerpta de virtutibus et vitiis (= EE)·, one volume entitled Excerpta de insidiis (= El)·,
another entitled Excerpta de legationibus gentium ad Romanos (ELr)·, another known
as Excerpta de legationibus Romanorum adgentes (ELg)·, and another referred to as Ex-
cerpta de sententiis (= ES). Each scholar (excerptor) was commissioned to create excerpta
from one or more authors concerning the 53 subjects of the collection. Each excerptor
had to read the work, after which he carefully selected passages and divided the whole
excerpta according to the fifty three different subjects.1
Among the excerpted authors there also figured John of Antioch. From the His-
toria Chronike. we possess: a) 75 excerpta from the volume de virtutibus et vitiis·, b)
no excerpta from de insidiis·, and c) 1 excerptum from de legationibus Romanorum ad
Gentes. There are no excerpta from de sententiis. From the whole Excerpta Constan-
tiniana comes the majority of the fragments contained in my critical edition (2005)
and in that by S. Mariev (2008). It should be clear to all readers that these Excerpta
Constantiniana de virtutibus and de insidiis - along with the related lemmata in the
Suda Lexicon and the long fragment in the Codex Athous 4932 = Iviron 812, discovered
by S. Lambros - form the so-called Minimalbestand of John of Antioch for both
editions.2 For my part, I do not think that there is an inflated or deflated John of
Antioch. On the contrary, scholars who have the time and patience to investigate
the question of this difficult textual tradition can easily see that the two editions are
based on different methodological approaches. In his 2008 edition, S. Mariev ascribes
texts to John of Antioch strictly on the basis of stylistic and linguistic criteria. In this
methodological choice, Mariev accepts many results of P. Sotiroudis, who dedicated
a very detailed study to the Historia Chronike in 1989.3 There can be no doubt that
these criteria are indispensable for reconstructing the style and language of the “real”
John of Antioch. They allow us to recover or at least to get very close to the original
wording of the Historia Chronike. In addition, even if fragmentary, this section of
fragments - Excerpta Constantiniana, Lemmata from Suda Lexicon, the long fragment
of Codex Athous 4932 = Iviron 812 - allows us to have a good knowledge of John of
1 See Roberto, “Byzantine collections”; recently: Cohen-Skalli, “Les Excerpta Constantiniana . For the
Excerpta Constantiniana from John Malalas see Flusin, “Les Excerpta Constantiniens”. Pia Carolla is
now preparing a new edition of the Excerpta de legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes (Bibliotheca Scrip-
torum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana).
2 See John of Antioch, ed. Roberto; John of Antioch, ed. Mariev. According to both editors, the Excerpta
Planudea are also based on the Historia Chronike. All of these traditions can be easily recognized as
Minimalbestand for John of Antioch by anyone who makes the least effort to compare the two modern
editions of John of Antioch. See also S. Mariev paper in this volume. Unfortunately, in his analysis of
both editions P. van Nuffelen overlooks this evidence: see Van Nuffelen, “John of Antioch”. For disag-
reement about other textual traditions ascribed by me to John of Antioch as the Excerpta Salmasiana as
well as the important texts from the Codex Paris. i6jo, see Mariev, “Über das Verhältnis”.
3 See Sotiroudis, Untersuchungen. This is a study that was meant to be preliminary to an edition of John
of Antioch which Sotiroudis never realized. Sotiroudis’ study is a fundamental work for the understan-
ding of the Historia Chronike and the history of the textual tradition. Many of his results are accepted
by both editors.