John Malalas as a source for John of Antioch’s Historia Chronike

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Antioch’s elevated style and education. As is well known, the excerptores Constanti-
niani made only slight alterations to the language and style of the authors chosen for
their sylloge. On the other hand, if deployed as the sole basis for reconstructing the
Historia Chronike, these criteria do not allow a general understanding of the whole
historiographical tradition under the name of John of Antioch. They could even be
counterproductive. In fact, according to these criteria, even some Excerpta Constan-
tiniana are excluded by Soutiroudis and Mariev from the so-called “real John of An-
tioch”. In my opinion, we can achieve a better reconstruction of John of Antioch’s
work if we apply stylistic and linguistic criteria together with historiographical and
cultural criteria. We should always keep in mind that we do not possess the direct
tradition for the Historia Chronike, except perhaps in the case of the long fragment in
Codex Iviron 812 = Codex Athous 4932. Therefore, the indirect tradition of the Historia
Chronike needs to be investigated in depth in order to achieve a better understanding
of the work of John of Antioch. Moreover, before speaking of a living text, which
may be a solution that risks oversimplifying the issue, it should be stressed that there
are many problems still in need of investigation. The relationship between John of
Antioch and John Malalas is one of these problems.4
Every investigation of John of Antioch must perforce start from the Excerpta
Constantiniana. Further attention must be given to every proposal to ascribe other
groups of fragments to the Historia Chronike. Therefore, as far as the relationship bet-
ween John Malalas and John of Antioch is concerned, we will base our reconstruction
on the evidence of the Excerpta Constantiniana. First of all, some methodological
statements are in order. From the many different studies which try to compare (when
possible) the Excerpta Constantiniana with the original text of the excerpted author,
it can be argued that the excerptores Constantiniani followed a common pattern in
working on the original manuscripts. Three observations may be made. First and fo-
remost, the excerptores do not usually alter the language and style of the original text
which they excerpt. Second, despite this overall faithfulness to the original, the ex-
cerptores do intervene in the narrative structure, omitting bits of text, changing names
and chronological data in order to create new excerpta, and making slight alterations
to arrange the text. Third and last, the excerptores respect the narrative sequence of the
original text, even if they have to cut a great deal of text from the original. This last
observation is very important for dating the Historia Chronike. In fact, the Excerpta
de virtutibus and de insidiis present both an identical narrative and chronological
sequence. The excerptor worked on the text to create excerpta, but he did not alter the
narrative sequence. As a consequence, the Excerpta Constantiniana are useful in resto-
4 The image of a “living text” is an elegant way of representing the complex transmission of John of
Antioch’s Historia Chronike. Nevertheless, this fascinating solution should not have as a consequence
the abandonment of attempts to resolve the many questions which are still open and in need of inves-
tigation in depth, (e.g., the relationship between the “real” John of Antioch and the main section of the
Excerpta Salmasiana). Probably, in many cases there will be no decisive solution of the problems. Any-
way, the fragment of John deserve such engagement.