Malalas and erudite memory in sixth-century Constantinople

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ma’s subject officials are mentioned in two passages of John the Lydian. In Magistr. 117
there is a description of the cloaks of the patricians with mention of purple stripes and
Latin terminology. In addition, Magistr. I 23 mentions purple stripes and Latin ter-
minology in a detailed description of the consuls’ clothing. Both these passages were
summarized by Malalas with omission of the Latin terminology: “others [= cloaks]
for his senators and men of civil and military rank with purple stripes”.74 Another
indication of Malalas simplifying John the Lydian can be gleaned from a comparison
with Magistr. II 13. In this passage, which offers a description of the Praetorian Pre-
fect’s clothing, John the Lydian is at pains to distinguish between the stripes for the
garments of the Praetorian Prefect, the ταβλία, and the stripes for the garments of the
emperor, sementa or segmenta. This detailed terminological nuance is lost in Malalas;
both the imperial as other cloaks have stripes which are called ταβΛία.
The analysis of Chron. II 8 showed how Malalas shrewdly collected and selected
from a wide array of sources and traditions in order to form an idiosyncratic narrative
on the travel of the colour purple from the Near East to Rome. To create this narra-
tive, Malalas used different traditions on the discovery of purple in Tyre. If Malalas
knew and consulted the oeuvre of Lydus, he combined these traditions with John the
Lydian’s account on the institution of the colour by Numa Pompilius. Malalas in that
case further elaborated his account of Numa’s dress code with materials from John the
Lydian which betray a rather cursory reading. If Malalas did not know the oeuvre of
Lydus, the ramifications of this case study are even more interesting; both Malalas and
Lydus exhibited a common attitude towards the distant past of Rome and the Roman
Empire.
3. Amongst Professors: a contemporary culture of erudite education
and research
The selective overview of parallels with the accompanying case study shows that Mala-
las’ writings are embedded in a common pool of erudite ideas and notions of Rome’s
distant past and the origin of the trappings of state. Malalas shared these erudite ma-
terials with his contemporaries and peers from the same city. The question is how to
interpret this occurrence of, on the one hand, close links in terms of textual production
and, on the other hand, close links in social networks.
One hypothesis is to posit the existence of a so called “school of Roman érudits"
around John the Lydian, which functioned in the framework of the state university
of Constantinople. The state university of Constantinople,75 and the networks which
developed around it, can indeed function as a framework to further contextualise and

74 Malalas, Chronographia II 8 (Thum 2000, p. 24): τάς δε των συγκλητικών αυτού καί των έν
άξίαις καί στρατείαις χλαμύδας έχούσας σήμαντρον τής βασιλικής φορεσιάς ταβλία
πορφυρά, trans. Jeffreys/Jeffreys/Scott (1986), p. 16.

75 Fuchs (1926), pp. 1-8, Chastagnol (i960), pp. 283-289), Hemmerdinger (1966), p. 175), Glück (1967), p. 56
n. 2), Lemerle (1971), pp. 62-65, Kelly (2004), p. 85. As regards the procedures behind the daily business,