Malalas’ Sources for the Contemporary Books

221

Book XIV, the last book before we begin this concentration on an individual emperor
in each book. Book XIV covers (according to its title) the period from “The reign of
Theodosius the younger to the reign of Leo the younger”. But it does not cover the
period in chronological order (and it is only in Book XIV that the chronicler Malalas
abandons a strict chronological narrative, and evidently has done so quite deliberately).
Rather there are two clearly distinct narratives for the reign of Theodosius: first comes
the complex Eudocia story (chapters 1-8); and then everything else (chapters 9-27 for
Theodosius; 28-47 f°r Marcian and Leo). There is no attempt at interrelating the two
Theodosius narratives, with a totally different cast of characters for each although both
deal with the same period of time. The second narrative, which then continues to the
death of Leo the younger in 474, contains the normal chronicle mixture of events, but
the whole Eudocia story is an entirely separate narrative.
The separation of the two narratives and the failure to integrate them surely points
to their being taken from two different sources. It is likely enough that at least part and
possibly all of the Eudocia story will have come originally from Priscus of Panion, in
which case it will almost certainly have reached Malalas via Eustathius of Epiphania,
who made much use of Priscus.13 Irrespective of that, it remains quite likely that Eu-
stathius was Malalas’ immediate source. For Malalas also points out at the end of the
second narrative (in the final sentence of Book XIV) that this was where “the most
learned Nestorianus” ended his chronicle. So Nestorianus was presumably the source
that Malalas had been following for at least part and quite probably all of his second
account of Theodosius’reign. If Eustathius and Nestorianus are the two chronicles still
available to Malalas and he did use two different sources for the two separate parts of
Book XIV, then his use of Nestorianus for the second part strengthens the likelihood
that his first account of Theodosius (the Eudocia narrative) will have been based on
Eustathius. That has implications for what follows, namely Book XV on Zeno.14
i. Book XV, Zeno.
Although Book XV is notable as the first book devoted to a single emperor, it almost
certainly does not qualify as contemporary. In content it in fact has very little in it
apart from the two revolts, first by Basiliscus and then by Ulus. What, however, needs
emphasis is that so much of the narrative is linked to the hippodrome one way or
another. Of the sixteen chapters that make up the book in both Thurn’s and the Aus-
13 It is worth noting that Malalas’only reference to Priscus is at Book XIV10 (p. 279,61-62 Thurn), where
he acknowledges him as the author of the history of the war against Attila the Hun without claiming
to have read it. On Malalas and Priscus see also Pia Carolla’s contribution in this volume.
14 Before going on, it is incidentally perhaps worth noting that Treadgold (2007a), p. 244 so completely
fails to notice the double chronological structure of Book XIV that he comments: “This book begins to
show an improvement in both the coherence and the accuracy of the narrative, which becomes free
from glaring chronological errors or obviously absurd elaborations”; cf. also Treadgold (2007b), p. 721.
On this, he is simply wrong.