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Pia Carolla

- Elizabeth Jeffreys, investigating the big picture of Malalas’ sources, considered the
possibility that some material in book XIV came directly from Priscus; in stating
this, she referred especially to the passage on Attila’s death: for this event, Malalas
reports two different versions, the first of which is probably Priscan;16
- Brodka has brilliantly traced streams of Priscan tradition in Malalas/Nicephorus
which are likely to come via Eustathius of Epiphania, because of important com-
mon errors (Malalas, ChronographialQN io and 16).
A closer look at the text of Malalas’relevant section, comparing Chronicon Paschale and
other witnesses, will be helpful in assessing the sources and looking for more traces of
Priscus in the Chronicle.
Highlighted (in bold type) are the parallels between Malalas and the Chronicon
Paschale, even though the latter has them in different order: the passages (A) and (C)
are in a row, while (B) occurs later on. Indeed, the Chronicons order is more accurate,
as the death of Valentinianus III (455 AD) really happened five years later than Theo-
dosius H’s. Actually, Malalas is repeatedly wrong about Theodosius’ dates, having him
dead after the sack of Rome in 455 by Gaiseric {Chronographia XIV 27).17 In other
words, Malalas is likely to have altered the order of facts offered by his source; given
that Eustathius of Epiphania is the most probable intermediary in common between
Malalas and the Chronicon Paschale, a copy-and-paste error might have happened here,
with the latter preserving the correct sequence of facts.18 19
Brodka’s contribution from the year 2012, however, has turned our attention to
another, more important kind of mistakes which are to be found in Malalas, i. e. those
easily made by chroniclers while summarizing a long and complex political history.
Based on Priscus, Eustathius already might have been mistaken in simplifying or
shortening, e.g conflating the battle at the Catalaunian Camps in Gaul (451 AD) with
the Eastern military intervention along the Danube one year later; on top, Malalas
may have added his own misunderstandings a number of times (cf. Chronographia
XIV io)V

16 Malalas, Chronographia XIV io (p. 279, 59-64 Thurn, of which the Priscan part is 59-62); cf. Priscus
Panita, exc. 23 Carolla (p. 62,5-6), which lordanes, the source, explicitly attributes to Priscus (lordanes,
Getica xlviii 254, with some difference in details). See Jeffreys (1990), p. 215, in the light of which one
can assume that at her p. 199 “Priskos”is to be referred to the death of Attila (not to the death of Julian
the emperor); so, probably the relevant sentence at her p. 199 has to be integrated as follows: “In the case
of Eutropius, Eutychianos <, Magnus > and Priskos Malalas uses these authors to give alternative ver-
sions of an event (the death of Julian <and Attila>) he would seem to have found puzzling”.
17 Thurn/Meier (2009), p. 377 n. 101 and n. 104.
18 This is why I think that the Chronicon Paschale attests some genuine Priscan stuff, however reworked by
one or more intermediaries, see Carolla (2016); for the contrary opinion, see Gastgeber (2016), p. 220.
For the “particular oddity of Book XIV”, namely the fact that Malalas “does not cover the period {scil.
of Theodosius II) in chronological order”, see Roger Scott’s contribution in this volume.
19 Brodka (2012), esp. pp. 207-209; see also Brodka (2008).