John Malalas as a source for John of Antioch’s Historia Chronike 273
εντεύθεν ό Τραϊανός πάσιν άμα τοϊς ύπ αυτόν άπηγόρευσε τού
τιμωρεϊσθαί τούτους.
«Trajan granted the Christians a cessation of persecution. For those who at that
time used to purchase official positions under the Romans were imposing different
punishments on the Christians to gain the favour of the current emperor. Hence
also Tiberianus, governing Palaestina Prima, mentioned this to him, saying that it
is not enough to kill the Christians henceforth, since those people willingly bring
themselves to this punishment. As a result, Trajan at once forbade all the people
under him to persecute the Christians» (transl. Mariev).
In our critical editions, both S. Mariev and I list this excerpt as coming from the text of
the “real” John of Antioch. It should be stressed that Sotiroudis apparently forgot this
text in the course of his removing all the traces of John Malalas from John of Antioch.
As many scholars have pointed out, Malalas, Chronographia XI 5 is the only other
source for this information regarding Tiberianus, and he probably derives it from a
local Antiochene source. In fact, the text recalls a letter by the governor Tiberianus -
otherwise unknown to us - to the emperor Trajan on the behaviour to show towards
Christians. According to the historical context in Malalas, Tiberianus should be the
governor of Palaestina Prima in 114. At that time, Trajan was in Antioch at the begin-
ning of the Parthian war. We do not possess other evidence for Tiberianus as governor
in 114. The glaring anachronism, not noticed by John Malalas and transmitted un-
changed by John of Antioch, is that Tiberianus is called governor of Palaestina Prima.
It is common knowledge that the two provinces of Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Se-
cunda were created in the first half of the fourth century. On the other hand, the name
of the region was ludaea until 135. After 135 (Syria) Palaestina replaces the name of lu-
daea.'Pnis obviously sets a terminus post quem for the source of Malalas. Likely coming
from Antioch, the source modernizes with a Syriac setting the most renowned action
to take place among those contained in Trajan’s rescript to Pliny the Younger about
the Christians (conquirendi non sunt). The mention of Tiberianus is found only in John
Malalas and John of Antioch. In turn, the passage in which Tiberianus is mentioned
by Suda, s.v. Traianos, seems to derive from the excerpts of the Historia Chronike.'0
This passage provides us with strong evidence that John of Antioch made direct
use of Malalas. Theoretically it is possible that John of Antioch took this information
directly from the same Antiochene source as Malalas. This is presumably what S. Ma-
riev believes, as he affirms in the apparatus of his edition (p. 234): fontem non invent.
This possibility would be quite likely, if we did not have among the Excerpta Constan-
10 On this fragment, see von Stauffenberg, Die römische Kaisergeschichte., pp. 288-94. On Tiberianus, see
Schürer, Storia delpopolo giudaico, I, p. 626; Smallwood, The Jews, p. 549. Malalas inserts this information
on Trajan’s positive attitude towards Christians, using an unknown source. According to Stauffenberg’s
opinion (p. 294), the chronicler Domninus could be source for this information. In any case, Malalas’
text is very significant, as far as Trajan’s image in the Christian sources is concerned. See Zecchini,
“Traiano postumo”; and Meier, “Nero”, pp. 252-58.