Malalas and the Chronographic Tradition*
Peter van Nuffelen

Abstract The preface of John Malalas situates the chronicle within the traditions of histori-
ography on which Malalas himself draws and to which he is indebted in terms of content and
conception. In particular, his work is the result of the confluence of local history and the writing
of chronicles. Theophilus and Clement, mentioned in the preface, are predecessors of Malalas in
this respect and models for him. Their chronicles are locally focused, Theophilus on Alexandria
and Clement on Antioch; moreover, they adhere to the same date of the crucifixion (in AM
6000) as Malalas. Updating and copying within the chronographic tradition can be an explana-
tion for the often garbled nature of the source references in the chronicle.
A hermeneutics of suspicion governs most research on John Malalas. Manifest errors
and the fantastic nature of many a story recorded hardly inspire confidence in the
eyes of modern scholarship. Suspicion has been extended to his use of sources, many
of which are only known through his chronicle: Malalas is thought to have invented
at least some of the authors he mentions. In addition, many references are assumed
to be garbled because they are secondary: in the standard account of Malalas’ sources,
Elizabeth Jeffreys sides with Bourier’s reduction of the number of direct sources for
the first 14 books to just three (Domninus, Nestorianus and Timothy).1
This article starts out from a different methodological choice and takes Malalas’
references to lost authors seriously. Even if this approach cannot solve all problems, it
can produce results, as my first section will show. There I argue that the list of authors
mentioned in the preface can be read as reflecting the types of works Malalas relied
on and is therefore a statement about the nature of his own work. Moreover, there is
no reason to presume that any of the authors named in the preface is a fake. In fact, if
we accept their existence and their profile as it emerges from Malalas, we end up with
a fairly coherent picture of a set of lost authors who can be understood against the
background of 4th and 5th century historical writing and who, in turn, help to under-
stand Malalas’ peculiar work. If the derivative nature of many a reference in Malalas
is beyond doubt (a practice that is very common in ancient - not just late ancient! -
* The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under
the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/aooy-aoijl/ERC Grant Agreement n.
313153 and from the Flemish Research Fund. I thank Lorenzo Focanti for formatting the bibliography
and some useful references.
i Bourier (1899), (1900); Jeffreys (1990); Thurn/Meier (2009), p. 23.