2

The Composition of the Epitome

Zonaras arranged his material in two different ways. As will be shown below, the first method is the division of the chronicle into volumes, and the second the structuring of the text into broad thematic units.

2.1 The Division of the Epitome Into Volumes

The modern division of the Epitome into eighteen books was made by Ducange. The evidence of the manuscript tradition proves that Zonaras had originally divided his chronicle into two enormous volumes. The first included Jewish, Greek, and early Roman material and extended to the victory of the Roman Republic over Corinth and its allied city states in 146 bc. The second was devoted to the history of the Roman Empire, starting from the rise to power of the famous Roman general Pompey in c.ad 60. Early on in the scholarly investigations of the Epitome, Ducange rightly pointed out that, in a great number of manuscripts, the second volume includes various titles which explicitly indicate that the second book of Zonaras’ lengthy narrative is beginning.¹ The most characteristic of these can be found in the Par. gr. 1715:

This is the second book of John Zonaras. Epitome of histories compiled and composed by the monk John Zonaras. The former book contains the subjects related to Jewish antiquities, Rome and consulships, and this one with the history of the emperors.

βίβλος δευτέρα ἰωάννου τοῦ ζωναρᾶ. ἐπιτομὴ ἱστοριῶν συλλεγεῖσα καὶ συγγραφεῖσα παρὰ ἰωάννου μοναχοῦ τοῦ ζωναρᾶ. ἡ μὲν προτέρα βίβλος περιέχει τὰ ἑβραϊκὰ καὶ τὰ τῆς ῥώμης καὶ τὰ τῶν ὑπατειῶν, αὕτη δὲ τὰς περὶ τῶν αὐτοκρατόρων ἱστορίας.²

Although this title was considered by Pinder to be an interpolation by the hand of the copyist and was, therefore, put into the critical apparatus, such titles can very well reflect the original two-part division of the chronicle.

As we can see, there is a large chronological gap—of about eighty-six years—between the end of the first volume of the Epitome and the beginning of the second. The author himself says that he omitted the period of the Late Roman Republic ‘against his will’ (‘ἄκων’).³ He was forced to do so because he was not able to find sources dealing with this period. He was apparently missing the relevant books of Cassius Dio’s Roman History, one of his major sources for the presentation of Roman history. This part of Dio’s work does not survive either. We do not know whether these books of the Roman History had already been lost by the twelfth century or whether they were simply not available to Zonaras. The gap in the sequence of the narrative is a plausible explanation for why the author ended his first volume with the events of 146 bc.⁴

Leaving this practical reason aside, starting the second volume of the Epitome with Pompey may seem odd. Interestingly, another universal chronicle, that by the eight-century author George Synkellos, also starts its second volume with Pompey. A meticulous examination of the tenth-century Par. gr. 1764, the oldest manuscript which preserves Synkellos’ text, has convincingly shown that the chronicle was originally divided by the writer into two volumes.⁵ The first one ran from the Creation of the world to the conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 bc. The second commenced immediately afterwards, with Pompey’s triumphal return to Rome in the same year, and ended with the rise of Diocletian to the throne in ad 284.⁶ In contrast to Zonaras’ Epitome, there is no chronological gap between the events recounted at the end of the first volume and those at the beginning of the second. Synkellos’ division of the work in this way emphasized the fulfilment of a mythical prediction given by Jacob, namely that when the Incarnation of Christ was approaching, Judaea would no longer be ruled by a Jew. For Synkellos, this prophecy came true with the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans.⁷ The example of Synkellos’ chronicle indicates that beginning a volume dedicated to Roman history with Pompey, however unusual, was not unprecedented in the tradition of chronicle writing.

The pattern which emerges from Zonaras’ two-volume division of his chronicle is that the first book focused on Jewish antiquities and pre-imperial Roman history, and the second on imperial history, even if it started with the final years of the Roman Republic. As I will explain in Chapter 5, the political system under Pompey and Julius Caesar, and afterwards under Mark Antony and Augustus, is characterized by the chronicler as a ‘monarchy in disguise’.⁸ This period is perceived by Zonaras as a precursor to the ‘genuine monarchy’ established later by Augustus. The two volumes of the Epitome, in other words, correspond to pre-imperial and imperial history. The title given to the second volume of the chronicle by the scribe of the Par. gr. 1715 supports this view. The scribe writes that the second book contains the history of the Roman emperors, which demonstrates that he clearly understood the second volume to be dealing specifically with imperial history.

2.2 The Internal Thematic Structure of the Epitome

The division of the chronicle into two volumes is different to its internal thematic structure. In terms of thematic units, Zonaras arranges his chronicle into two broad sections. The first concerns Jewish antiquities, covering Books 1 to 6 in the editions of the work. The second covers Books 7 to 18 and relates the history of the Roman nation.

Zonaras gives his audience a clear idea of the main themes and the general compositional structure of his narrative in the proem of the Epitome. The chronicle’s contents take up the entire second half of the proem. Zonaras’ interest in giving a clear outline of the contents of his work is further highlighted by a comparison of the Epitome’s proem to the proems of other historical texts. Let us take as examples works on which Zonaras relied for the composition of his account. From the proem of Theophanes’ Chronographia, for instance, we learn about the period covered in the text—from the accession of Diocletian to the throne in 284 to the end of the reign of Michael I Rangabe in 813 – and the range of material included in the chronicle, which deals with ‘military or ecclesiastical or civic or popular or of any other kind’ of affairs (‘[πρᾶξις] εἴτε πολεμική, εἴτε ἐκκλησιαστική, εἴτε πολιτική, εἴτε δημώδης, εἴτε τις ἑτέρα’).⁹ In the preface to his Synopsis of Histories, John Skylitzes is notoriously vague as to the contents of his text. He tells us only that his description will start from the point at which Theophanes ended his Chronographia, and that it will provide a brief summary of the history of the Byzantine state.¹⁰ Introducing his Historia Syntomos, Michael Psellos states in barest outline that his chronicle will focus on those ‘who reigned in Elder Rome and later in Younger Rome’ (‘τῶν παρὰ τῇ πρεσβυτέρᾳ Ῥώμῃ βασιλευσάντων καὶ αὖθις τῇ νεωτέρᾳ’), beginning with Romulus, the first king of Rome.¹¹ Not one of these writers gives the kind of long, detailed overview of the work’s contents that we find in Zonaras’ proem.

The opening clauses to the contents of Zonaras’ text shed light on the reason why he tried so hard to give his audience a good understanding of what was to follow in his narrative. He writes: ‘But before my history, I should say in summary what the things are that are going to be narrated, so that the readers of the work may know that they will gain knowledge of many and most indispensable histories’ (‘Ἀλλά μοι πρὸ τῆς ἱστορίας κεφαλαιωδέστερον εἰρήσθω τίνα τὰ ἱστορηθησόμενα, ἵν’ εἰδεῖεν οἱ τῷ συγγράμματι ἐντευξόμενοι ὡς πολλῶν τε καὶ τούτων ἀναγκαιοτάτων ἱστοριῶν ἐν εἰδήσει γενήσονται’).¹² Looking over the contents, readers can understand that Zonaras’ extensive account does not have a narrow thematic focus, but is a work that encompasses a wide variety of subjects. The author, furthermore, wished to show that his narrative comprised two distinct thematic sections, the Jewish and the Roman. Hence, he presents the contents of each section separately.

Summarizing the Jewish contents of the Epitome in his proem, Zonaras offers a detailed account of the key events in the history of the people of Israel that will feature in his text.¹³ He begins with the story of the ten tribes of Israel and the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V, and then mentions a number of significant historical figures on whom he will focus, such as the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II, the Persian ruler Cyrus II, the Macedonian Alexander the Great, the king of the Seleucid Empire Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Roman statesman Pompey, and the Jewish king Herod. Most of these figures appear because they played an important role in the history of Jerusalem. The author recalls, for example, the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and later the decree granted to Jews by Cyrus that allowed them to return to the city and restore the Holy Temple.

It is interesting to note, moreover, that Zonaras in his prologue names the major sources he will use for his account of Jewish history. Among these, he acknowledges, are certain Old Testament books: the Octateuch, the Books of Kings, the Books of Chronicles and the Books of Esdras. Additional sources from which he will derive material are the works of Flavius Josephus, the Roman-Jewish historian of the first century ad, whom Zonaras discusses twice in the proem. One observes that the writer prefers to mention sources that are directly related to Jewish antiquities. No reference is made to secondary sources that supplement and extend information supplied by the main sources about other subjects. The works of Herodotus, Plutarch and Xenophon, for instance, from which Zonaras draws rich material for Greek and Persian history, are not cited in his proem.

Zonaras’ outline of Jewish antiquities in the proem concludes with a reference to the conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans in ad 70. This reference offers the author a convenient way to introduce the subjects recounted in the second section of his work, which is dedicated to the Roman past.¹⁴ This part of the proem provides a detailed overview of the history of Rome, with Zonaras naming significant events and famous individuals, such as Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Augustus, with whom he will deal later in the narrative. The stress is very much on the evolution of the Roman political constitutions—from a kingship, into a tyranny, an aristocracy, a republic, and finally a monarchy.

An important point to note about the manner in which Zonaras presents the contents of the chronicle’s Roman section is that he makes an implicit distinction in his account of the Roman nation before and after the reign of Constantine the Great. This distinction is not as sharp and straightforward as that between the Jewish and the Roman contents of the Epitome. Still, there is a striking change in Zonaras’ presentation of pre- and post-Constantinian history. Up to the period of Constantine, Zonaras gives a very concise overview of the Roman material included in his work. Constantine is the last historical figure who is described in some detail in the contents, with the author highlighting the appearance of the Cross in the heavens to Constantine and the foundation of ‘New Rome’. The manner in which he summarizes the post-Constantinian material of his chronicle is substantially different. This extract is worth quoting in full:

[…] and who ruled after him [Constantine I] in Constantinople, what each of them was like in his character, but also in his religious beliefs, and how long he maintained the power, and in what way he left this life. And who was at the head of the Church of Constantinople, and for how long each one was, and who of these adhered to the right doctrine, who supported different doctrines, and in what way each of these followed them. And under which emperors and which patriarchs and against whom the councils were called.

[…] καὶ τίνες μετ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐν αὐτῇ ἐβασίλευσαν, καὶ οἷος ἕκαστος ἦν τοὺς τρόπους, ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τὸ σέβας, καὶ ὅσον ἐκράτησε τῆς ἀρχῆς, καὶ ὅπως μετήλλαξε τὴν ζωήν· τίνες τε τῆς ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει προέστησαν ἐκκλησίας, καὶ ἐφ’ὅσον ἕκαστος, καὶ τίνες αὐτῶν τοῦ ὀρθοῦ ἀντείχοντο δόγματος, τίνες δὲ γεγόνασιν ἑτερόδοξοι, καὶ ὅπως τῶν τῇδε μετελήλυθεν ἕκαστος· καὶ ἐπὶ τίνων αὐτοκρατόρων καὶ πατριαρχῶν καὶ κατὰ τίνων αἱ σύνοδοι συγκεκρότηνται.¹⁵

Here, we see that Zonaras is not nearly as precise in his outline of this part of his work as he was in the overview of the earlier Roman material; he mentions neither the crucial events nor the key historical figures that marked the period after the reign of Constantine. More than this, Zonaras makes it clear that there will be a shift in the narrative focus. He will move from a narrative of events and renowned individuals in his presentation of pre-Constantinian Roman history to a narrative of biographies in his presentation of the Empire after Constantine. The writer says that he will concentrate on the lives and characters of emperors, and will also relate the history of the patriarchs of Constantinople, discussing mainly those who remained faithful to the orthodox doctrines and those who deviated from them.¹⁶ As will be shown in the next chapter, this turn towards a more personality-centred approach has to do with the biographical style of writing that characterizes the sources exploited by Zonaras for his account of Byzantine history, but also with the author’s own literary choices.¹⁷ Furthermore, the prologue makes it apparent that Zonaras will deal primarily with the new imperial capital, rather than the events throughout the Empire. This underlying distinction between the pre- and post-Constantinian Roman state is highly significant, because it reflects the chronicler’s understanding of Roman history. He essentially acknowledges that there is a distinction between the Old Roman Empire, with Rome as its capital, and the New Roman Empire, the ‘Byzantine Empire’, with Constantinople as its capital.

There are good reasons to think that the extensive proem of the chronicle was one of the last parts written by author. This is suggested by the very detailed presentation of the work’s contents in the proem and, more importantly, by the fact that the proem, divided into two parts, echoes the clear-cut division of the Jewish and the Roman material in the main text. It is clear, moreover, that Zonaras’ composition of the proem takes into consideration some of the basic features of the main part of his text, namely the focus of the narrative on the development of Rome’s political constitutions, and the personality-focused approach to the account of Byzantium.

The sharp division of the Epitome into two thematic sections, the Jewish and the Roman, can be seen, apart from in the proem, in the text proper, at the point when Zonaras completes his account of Jewish history.¹⁸ A short paragraph serves as the conclusion of the Jewish section of the Epitome. There, Zonaras explains that, with the fall of Jerusalem in Roman hands, the story of the tribulations of the Jews comes to an end. He continues by saying that, under Hadrian, the Jews revolted against the Romans, but were once again defeated and destroyed. He adds that he will relate these events in the corresponding parts of his narrative, obviously in the Roman section that follows.

The next paragraph introduces the theme of Roman antiquities.¹⁹ In this paragraph, the author lists the main subjects he will address in the Roman section of the Epitome, namely the origins of the Roman nation, the successful campaigns of the Romans to spread their rule all over the world, and the different forms of government that were developed throughout the history of the Empire. Zonaras underlines that his aim in the Roman section will be to teach his readers about the evolution of the Roman political system, a theme which plays a central role in the Epitome, as will be explained in Chapter 5.²⁰ Of great interest is the phrase which opens this paragraph: ‘Since I recalled the history of the Romans […]’ (‘Ῥωμαίων δὲ μνησθείσης τῆς ἱστορίας […]’).²¹ This statement is very similar to the one Zonaras uses in his proem to begin his discussion of the Roman part of the work: ‘Since I recalled the history of the Romans and the history of Rome […]’ (‘Ῥωμαίων δὲ καὶ τῆς Ῥώμης μνησθείσης τῆς ἱστορίας […]’).²² It is highly plausible, therefore, that the paragraph which introduced the Epitome’s Roman section was composed in the final stages of Zonaras’ writing, more or less at the same time as the proem.

The clear-cut distinction between the Jewish and the Roman section of the Epitome is further highlighted if considered in comparison with the way in which Jewish-Roman history is presented in other Byzantine chronicles.²³ Indeed, authors of universal chronicles often attempt to mingle the Jewish with the Roman material in their works in order to form a more cohesive narrative and stress a sense of continuity between the two traditions. Discussing the internal organization of the sixth-century chronicle of John Malalas, Mary Whitby argues that the work is structured into three parts: the first concerns Jewish and Old Testament history (Books 1 to 6), the second Roman antiquities (Books 7 to 12), and the last Byzantium (Books 13 to 18), ‘a scheme that anticipates the chronicle of John Zonaras in the twelfth century’.²⁴ Malalas, though, incorporates the story of Aeneas, including his adventures and the foundation of Alba Longa, into Book 6, the final book in the Jewish section.²⁵ Within his account of Aeneas and his descendants, he intertwines short pieces of information about parallel developments in the Jewish and the Greek world.²⁶ Further, nowhere in Malalas’ narrative do we find authorial statements that explicitly indicate that the Jewish section has come to a close and that a new one featuring Roman antiquities is about to open. The mid-ninth-century chronicle of George the Monk, which begins with the Creation and extends to 867, is also a good example of how a chronicler would arrange his Jewish, Greek, and Roman material into a continuous account. Having discussed the Persian Empire and the Hellenistic kingdoms, George immediately moves to on the history of the Roman Empire, using no concluding paragraph or linking construction.²⁷ This pattern was copied three centuries later by Michael Glykas, a near-contemporary of Zonaras, whose chronicle also ends with the death of Alexios Komnenos in 1118.²⁸

That Zonaras distinguishes in such a straightforward manner the Jewish from the Roman material in his work sets him apart from other authors of universal chronicles. This structural pattern plays down a remarkable ideological feature traditionally ascribed to Byzantine chronicles: that their authors sought to establish the Empire as the fourth kingdom prophesized in the apocalyptic visions of the prophet Daniel and to present its citizens as the rightful heirs to the Jews as God’s Chosen People.²⁹ This concept certainly emerges in the Epitome, but is not prominently stressed.³⁰ Zonaras’ account of the Jewish past represents it as largely self-contained. Within a composition of wide scope, the Jewish section clearly has its own theme and also its own concluding paragraph, which signifies to the audience that the long presentation of the history of the people of Israel has finally reached its end. For Zonaras, the story of Israel is a theme worthy of being treated in its own right.

A question pertinent to this discussion is whether Zonaras perceived the idea of composing an ambitious, wide-ranging universal chronicle at the very beginning of his work or whether he developed the final form of his text more gradually. We should not forget, after all, that such a lengthy work must have been created over a considerable period of time.³¹ When he took up writing, he already had at his disposal the Bible and the epitome of Josephus’ JA, the sources that form the backbone of the early parts of his narrative of Jewish antiquities. It is likely, however, that he did not initially have access to Cassius Dio’s Roman History, the work which provided him with the fundamental structure for his presentation of Roman history up to the early third century ad. An indication of this lack is offered in the third book of the Epitome, where Zonaras makes a passing reference to Dio’s work. Analysing one of the prophetic visions found in the Book of Daniel, he tells us that the prophet predicted that the fourth great empire, the Roman Empire, would conquer all the lands and nations which had not been conquered by Alexander the Great. Zonaras turns directly to his readers and says that ‘whoever is interested in knowing about these historical events should read the books of Dio, the Roman, and the writings of Polybius’ (‘ἅπερ ὁ βουλόμενος γνῶναι τὰς βίβλους τοῦ Ῥωμαίου Δίωνος ἀναγνώτω καὶ τὰ τοῦ Πολυβίου συγγράμματα’).³² Here, Zonaras urges his audience to read about the expansion of the Roman Empire, mentioning the sources from which one could derive useful information on the topic. The question which arises is why the chronicler would prompt his readers to seek out Dio’s history in order to learn about the rise of the Roman Empire, if he intended to take abundant material from this same source and cover precisely this topic later in his own work.

A parallel observation can be made about Zonaras’ reference to another external source. Drawing on Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, the chronicler makes a digression on the life of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great. Bringing his digression to an end, he states that Herodotus offers a different version of Cyrus’ upbringing, life and death. He explains that he is unable to include this material in his chronicle because it would prolong his narrative unduly. Zonaras says: ‘Anyone who wishes to know what Herodotus wrote about Cyrus should use his work and will find this information in the first book, which he named after Clio, the first of the Muses’ (‘ὅτῳ δ’ εἰδέναι βούλημα καὶ ἅπερ Ἡρόδοτος περὶ αὐτοῦ συνεγράψατο, τὴν ἐκείνου μεταχειρισάμενος βίβλον εὑρήσει ταῦτα κατὰ τὸν πρῶτον λόγον, ᾧ τὴν πρώτην τῶν Μουσῶν ἐπέγραψε τὴν Κλειώ’).³³ Here, the writer encourages his readers to read Herodotus’ Histories because he had no intention of weaving the Cyrus-related material from Herodotus into his own work.

I would suggest that the same explanation applies to the case of Dio. It is plausible that at the time when Zonaras recounted the prophetic visions of Daniel, he had no intention of drawing on Dio’s work. He had probably not acquired a copy of Dio by that point and had not yet decided to widen the scope of his chronicle to include the history of Roman Empire. He viewed the expansion of Roman rule as a theme that was then beyond the scope of his text and, therefore, encouraged those interested in the topic to look for an external source. In other words, this early reference to Dio’s History indicates that the author initially meant to focus on the Jewish past alone. He initiated his project as a book dedicated to Jewish history, in which topics concerning ancient Rome would be treated only in passing. He might even have thought at first that the distant and more recent past of the Byzantine state was adequately discussed by some of the works he had known, such as John Xiphilinos’ Epitome of Dio, Michael Psellos’ Historia Syntomos and Chronography.³⁴ The original conception of his work, however, changed in the course of writing. The key factor that allowed him to expand the subject of his enquiry to include the history of the Romans was the range of sources he gradually managed to collect. It must have been when he managed to get his hands on Dio’s history that he considered the possibility of writing about Roman antiquities. This inference is central to our perception and understanding of Zonaras’ work as a whole. To put it simply, the Epitome should not be viewed as a vast project that was conceived in its final form from the very beginning, but rather as a work in progress which gradually developed into its present form.

One can wonder subsequently why Zonaras initially meant to compose a work focusing on the Jewish past. To answer this question, one should consider how the Byzantines themselves viewed the period prior to and shortly after the Incarnation of Christ. For them, this period was the history of the people of Israel, God’s Chosen People. It was part of the early history of Christianity and, consequently, part of their own history. They viewed the story of the people of Israel as part of the Orthodox legacy. The Old Testament, after all, which covered the events of this period, was fully accepted in the Christian world: the Old Testament figures were just as ‘Christian’ in the Byzantine tradition as those of the New Testament. Therefore, aiming to write about the people of Israel, Zonaras wished to offer his readers an account of early Christian history. In addition, his choice to focus specifically on Byzantium’s biblical and early Christian past ties in well with the revival of interest in the study of the biblical text that was noted in the late eleventh century, namely a few decades before Zonaras started composing the Epitome.³⁵ It may also reflect the influence of themes in contemporary public discourse that stressed the links of Byzantium to its early Christian heritage; for example, references to Byzantium as the new Israel and to Constantinople as the new Jerusalem featured prominently in eleventh- and twelfth-century rhetoric.³⁶

Zonaras’ use of the works of Josephus as his principal sources for this period should not come as a surprise either. Despite being a Jew, Josephus exerted great influence in the Christian world in both the East and the West.³⁷ The most significant reason for this is that the content of his works supplemented the books of both the Old and the New Testaments. In his Church History and Praeparatio evangelica, the highly learned Eusebios of Caesarea made abundant use of Josephus. He recognized that his works were valuable witnesses to the history of early Christianity and provided an exegesis of the Old and the New Testament.³⁸ The employment of Josephus by Eusebios was of crucial importance to the later reception of the historian in Byzantium.³⁹ For instance, writing his Bibliotheca in the ninth century, Photios, the erudite patriarch of Constantinople, offers a detailed summary of the JA. He also praises Josephus’ literary merits as a historian in his codex concerned with the Jewish War (henceforth: JW), Josephus’ other major historical work.⁴⁰ A great number of fragments from Josephus’ works are present in the Excerpta of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos as well.⁴¹ Josephus was frequently read and used by Byzantine chroniclers; not only Zonara but also George the Monk, George Kedrenos, and Michael Glykas were based, either directly or indirectly, on his compositions. Just as for other Byzantine intellectuals, for Zonaras, too, Josephus was a very reliable—and therefore an obvious—source of information for early Christian history.

To summarize, this chapter showed that Zonaras organized his materials in two volumes (one devoted to Jewish and pre-imperial Roman history, and one to imperial Roman history) and two thematic sections (one related to the Jewish past, and one to the Roman). His account of post-Constantinian Roman history will be centred on the Constantinopolitan environment, placing the emphasis on Byzantine emperors and the patriarchs of the city. The investigation of the structure of the text also demonstrated that the Jewish section of the chronicle is a largely self-contained unit. I suggested that Zonaras’ initial aim might have been to produce a work dedicated to Jewish antiquities. Finding more sources as he was writing, the author broadened the subject matter of his text and included the history of the Roman nation.

John Zonaras’ Epitome of Histories: A Compendium of Jewish-Roman History and Its Reception. Theofili Kampianaki, Oxford University Press. © Theofili Kampianaki 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192865106.003.0003

¹ Epitome, I, xiv–xv. See also Leone, ‘La tradizione manoscritta’; Büttner-Wobst, ‘Textgeschichte’.

² Epitome, II, 298 (the critical apparatus).

³ The part of the text in which Zonaras accounts for the gap in his narrative is found in the Epitome, II, 297.9–298.7.

⁴ This opinion is also expressed by Treadgold: Treadgold, Historians, 393.

⁵ J. Torgerson, ‘From the Many, One? The Shared Manuscripts of the Chronicle of Theophanes and the Chronography of Synkellos’, TM: Studies in Theophanes, ed. by M. Jankowiak and F. Montinaro, 19 (2015), 93–117.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ See p. 106 of this book.

⁹ Theophanes, Chronographia, I, 4.17–18. The translation of the segment is contained in The Chronicle of Theophanes, 2.

¹⁰ Skylitzes, Synopsis, 4.40–4 (proem).

¹¹ Psellos, Historia Syntomos, 2.1–3.

¹² Epitome, I, 9.8–11.

¹³ Ibid., 9.11–12.9.

¹⁴ Ibid., 12.10–15.9.

¹⁵ Ibid., 15.2–9.

¹⁶ Banchich and Lane, The History of Zonaras, 39.

¹⁷ See pp. 61–3 of this book.

¹⁸ Epitome, I, 561.17–23.

¹⁹ Ibid., 562.1–14.

²⁰ See pp.101–4 of this book.

²¹ Epitome, I, 562.1.

²² Epitome, I, 12.10.

²³ R. Fishman-Duker, ‘The Second Temple Period in Byzantine Chronicles’, Byz, 47 (1977), 126–56, where special reference to Zonaras is made. In a more recent publication, the same author comments on the image of Jews, as it emerges from Byzantine chronicles: R. Fishman-Duker, ‘Images of Jews in Byzantine Chronicles: A General Survey’, in Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, ed. by R. Bonfil et al. (Leiden, 2012), 777–98.

²⁴ M. Whitby, ‘The Biblical Past in John Malalas and the Paschal Chronicle’, in From Rome to Constantinople: Studies in Honour of Averil Cameron, ed. by H. Amirav and B. ter Haar Romeny (Leuven, 2007), 279–302, at 286.

²⁵ Malalas, Chronographia, 126–30.

²⁶ Ibid., 130–1.

²⁷ George the Monk, Chronicon, I, 293.

²⁸ Glykas, Annales, 379.

²⁹ Markopoulos, Η θέση του χρονογράφου.

³⁰ See also Matheou, ‘City and Sovereignty’, 48–9.

³¹ In the final lines of the text, Zonaras writes: ‘Here, let my writing reach an end and the course of the history, which I very much prolonged, come to an end’ (‘Ἐνταῦθά μοι τὸ πέρας ἤτω τῆς συγγραφῆς καὶ ὁ δρόμος στήτω τῆς ἱστορίας, ὅς μοι πρὸς μακρὸν ἐκμεμήκισται’), signifying both the great amount of text he produced and the great amount of time he had spent on the writing: Epitome, III, 768.1–2.

³² Epitome, I, 227.15–16.

³³ Ibid., 303.8–11.

³⁴ We know other Byzantine historians, who, too, did not find it necessary to cover a certain period in their works, because this period had already been sufficiently discussed by previous authors. A characteristic example is John Skylitzes, who believed that George Synkellos and his continuator, Theophanes Confessor, gave a substantial account of the period from the Genesis to the early ninth century. Hence, he started his own narrative after that point. See Skylitzes, Synopsis, 3.6–16 (proem).

³⁵ M. Mullett, ‘Food for the Spirit and a Light for the Road: Reading the Bible in the Life of Cyril Phileotes by Nicholas Kataskepenos’, in Literacy, ed. by Holmes and Waring, 139–64, at 139.

³⁶ P. Magdalino and R. Nelson, ‘Introduction’, in The Old Testament, ed. by Magdalino and Nelson, 1–38, at 25.

³⁷ Kampianaki, ‘Perceptions’; J. Carleton Paget, ‘Some Observations on Josephus and Christianity’, Journal of Theological Studies, 52 (2001), 539–624; Schreckenberg, ‘Josephus in Early Christian Literature’.

³⁸ A. Johnson, Eusebius (London, 2014), 85–11; A. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica (Oxford, 2006), 128–30; Schreckenberg, ‘Josephus in Early Christian Literature’, 63–71; Schreckenberg, Die Flavius-Josephus-Tradition, 79–88. It has been proposed that Eusebius was the author of the so-called Testimonium Flavianum, the part of the JA (Book 18, chapters 63–4) dedicated to the historical Jesus: K. Olson, ‘A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum’, in Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations, ed. by A. Johnson and J. Schott (Washington, 2013), 97–114; L. Feldman, ‘On the Authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum Attributed to Josephus’, in New Perspectives on Jewish Christian Relations, ed. by E. Carlebach and J. Schechter (Leiden, 2012), 14–30.

³⁹ Studies that deal with or touch upon the use of Josephus’ writings by Byzantine scholars are the following: Kampianaki, ‘Prelimary Observations’; T. Leoni, ‘The Text of the Josephan Corpus. Principal Greek Manuscripts, Ancient Latin Translations, and the Indirect Tradition’, in A Companion to Josephus, ed. by Chapman and Rodgers, 307–21, particularly at 312; Bowman, ‘Josephus in Byzantium’; Schreckenberg, ‘Josephus in Early Christian Literature’; Schreckenberg, Die Flavius-Josephus-Tradition.

⁴⁰ Photios, Photius. Bibliothèque, ed. by R. Henry, 8 vols (Paris, 1959–1977), I, 155–8 (codex 76) and 32–3 (codex 47), respectively. For Photios’ treatment of Josephus, see J. Schamp, ‘Flavius Josèphe et Photios’, JÖB, 32 (1982), 185–96.

⁴¹ Bowman, ‘Josephus in Byzantium’, 369–70.