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

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Conclusion
John Malalas is an extremely important source for John of Antioch, at least up until
the beginning of the section on Roman history. It is from John Malalas that John of
Antioch derives his archaiologia and the chronological information that that section
contains. The same holds true for the synchronisms between the Jewish monarchy and
the Trojan War. On the other hand, John of Antioch develops an original structure,
showing a strong interest for the Roman Republic that is not to be found in Malalas.
It is important to stress that in differentiating himself from the interests of Malalas,
John of Antioch takes as his reference the structure of Eutropius’ Breviarium, filling it
out with various pieces of information collected from a number of sources. While John
Malalas still continues to be used as a source for the history of the Roman Empire,
it is interesting to observe the peculiarity of this use. In fact, John of Antioch seems
to resort to John Malalas for the scattered reports devoted to the origin of Christia-
nity and to the historical background in which it develops. After the reign of Trajan,
there are no hints of Malalas among the known fragments of John of Antioch. The
relationship between John Malalas and John of Antioch is evident. Therefore, John of
Antioch’s fragments can also be very useful even for achieving a better knowledge of
Malalas’text. As regards Books I-IV of Malalas, John of Antioch derives both his his-
toriographical framework and even his narrative from the Chronographia. The Codex
Athous 4932 = Iviron 812, the Excerpta Salmasiana and many lemmata from the Suda
clearly show this to be the case.