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across the whole empire, so it could scarcely be omitted but anyway is discussed more
for Justin’s response to it than as a hippodrome event. Elsewhere in Book XVII we are
merely told in chapter 7 that Justin built hippodromes for the Seleucians and Isauri-
ans; and in chapter 18 that Justinian, on becoming co-emperor with his uncle, imme-
diately struck terror into all the provinces by a rescript threatening punishment on all
rioters and murderers which resulted in the factions in Antioch maintaining friendly
terms for a while. That again looks more like an imperial announcement than anything
else. The contrast from Book XV and early XVI is quite striking. And it continues. In
Book XVIII on Justinian, apart from an opening statement that Justinian supported
the Blues, the first reference to hippodrome material in Constantinople comes with
the Nika revolt, and that is in chapter 71 after some 40 pages of text in Thurn’s edition
(more than the combined length of Books XV and XVI) - and again the Nika riot
was obviously an event that could not go unreported. (There had been a mention at
chapter 35 of the Samaritan usurper Julian holding chariot races at Nablus; and at 41 a
riot in the theatre at Antioch [so neither the hippodrome nor Constantinople]). And
even after Nika there is nothing until 548 at chapter 99 and then in 550 at chapters 105
and 108 with faction riots in the hippodrome (some eight pages after the end of Nika
in Thurn’s edition); and then a whole lot more between 561 and 563.
So apart from the single incident under Justin (XVII 12) and then Nika (XVIII
71), both of which really had to be chronicled, there simply is no hippodrome material
from the moment Malalas begins doing his own chronicling and relying on what came
to his notice from 503 until 548 and not much till 561.17 That is a gap of 186 pages in
Thurn’s edition, which amounts to a lot of chronicling, over 40 % of the entire chron-
icle (186 pages out of 430). The change from Book XV and early XVI is striking, and
if I had to argue for a change of author at some point in Book XVIII (which I am
not doing), I would argue that the change took place with the revival of hippodrome
material near the end of Book XVIII in either 548, 550 or 561. It could be objected
that there were simply no faction riots to chronicle in this period, but Malalas himself
provides the evidence that it is highly unlikely that this is the case. He does after all
record Justinian’s inaugural announcement on becoming co-emperor that he would
eliminate all such violence, which must surely have been made in response to riots that
Malalas has not recorded. Justinian is unlikely to have made such a pronouncement
(and Malalas considered it worthy of reporting) if there had been just the one riot in
XVII12 across the previous 24 years (the last fifteen of Anastasius and the nine years of
Justin). And Malalas’own comment that this resulted in the factions staying peaceful
for a while clearly implies that such peace had not lasted forever. Faction riots must
have taken place both before and after Justinian’s proclamation and Malalas chose
not to report them. Malalas the chronicler is simply not a chronicler of hippodrome
faction riots - but Eustathius was.

17 This is not a result of our defective text. Theophanes, with access to a complete text of Malalas, only
knows of the riots recorded in our surviving text of Malalas.