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William Adler

Both the Jewish Sibyl and Lactantius are examples of “opposition history”, apoca-
lyptically-minded writers with a seething animosity to Rome and a hope and expecta-
tion of the removal of an alien power from the East and the restoration of native sover-
eignty.69 Malalas obviously had a more charitable view of the origins and legitimacy of
monarchy in the West. The first kings of the earth, including the earliest kings of Italy,
are now linked by common ancestry, all of them descended from Noah’s oldest son
Shem. Rather than a blood-soaked narrative of disruption, conquest, displacement,
and conflict East and West, Malalas’ story is one of migration, orderly colonization,
continuity, and the peaceful handover of power either through death or abdication.
Everyone wins a little in the process. The East is still the cradle of civilization. Assyria
retains its traditional role as the oldest kingdom of the world, and the first kings and
bringers of civilization are Semites. Granted, Rome had to forfeit the prestige asso-
ciated with having native-born kings.70 Before royalty from the East colonized the
region, the sons of Japhet who had already settled in Italy simply dwelt on the land,
living without cities, kings, or any form of government at all.71 But in exchange, the
empire in the West can now boast a respectable ancient “Semitic” pedigree, traceable
to the earliest kings of the oldest known kingdoms of the earth.
Variants of Malalas’ euhemerizing account of the establishment of the first world
kingdoms are plentiful in Byzantine universal chronicles.72 A later witness to the tra-
dition helpfully ascribes it to “the most wise Julius Africanus”, a pioneering figure in
the development of the genre of the Christian universal chronicle.73 The attribution
69 On opposition historiography, see Swain (1940), esp. pp. 18-21.
70 Roman historians speculated at length as to whether the primitive inhabitants of Latium were really
aboriginal or had migrated from somewhere else. One early opinion, credited by the Roman historian
Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Cato and Sempronius, held that they were colonists from Greece; see
Dionysius Halicarnassensis, Antiquitäten Romanae I 11,1-3. On the prestige of autochthony, see Di-
odorus Siculus, Bibliotheca I 9,3: “With respect to the antiquity of the human race, both the Greeks and
the barbarians hold that it is they who are autochthonous, and the first of all men to discover the things
that are of use in life, and that it was the events of their own history that were the earliest to be held
worthy of record”.
71 Malalas, Chronographia I 9 (p. 10, 69-70 Thurn): επί τήν δύσιν αβασίΛευτον ούσαν, μή
κρατουμένην ύπό τίνος κεΛεύοντος. On the claims that colonists from the East throughout the
world brought with them the building blocks of civilization and political order, see also Diodorus Sic-
ulus, Bibliotheca I 28, 4; I 29, 5. According to Diodorus, the Egyptians claimed that over-population
forced them to export migrants and redundant kings “all over the inhabited world”. In their view, even
Athens herself had been colonized by settlers from Sai's in Egypt.
72 For other witnesses to the tradition, see loannes Antiochenus, Historia chronica fr. 4 Roberto; Chronicon
Paschale pp. 64,19-67, 13 Dindorf; Georgius Cedrenus, Historiarum compendium 19.1-7 Tartaglia; Ex-
cerpta Latina Barbari pp. 234, 22-238, 2 Frick; Symeon Logothetes, Chronicon 28 (pp. 32,1-33, 25 Wahl-
gren).
73 See the critical apparatus to Symeon Logothetes, Chronicon 28 (p. 32, 6 Wahlgren): post Σήμ add. ώς
φησιν Αφρικανός ό σοφότατος ms. C; see also Georgius Cedrenus, Historiarum compendium 19.2,
13-14 Tartaglia: ώς δε Αφρικανός φησι (after the account of the birth of Afer from Cronus and
Rhea). For discussion of the authenticity of the passage, see Gelzer (1880), pp. 68-83. The text *s in~
cluded in the two editions of the fragments of lulius Africanus, Chronographiae'. fr. 24 Wallraff/Roberto
and fr. XII Routh. For analysis of the passage in the context of Africanus and Hellenistic universal
history, see Roberto (2006), pp. 10-12.