John of Antioch (historian)

7th-century monk and chronicler From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John of Antioch (Greek: Ίωάννης Άντιοχείας) was a 7th-century chronicler, who wrote in Greek. He was a monk, apparently contemporary with Emperor Heraclius (reigned 610–41). Heinrich Gelzer identifies the author with the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch John of the Sedre, who ruled from 630 to 648.^[1]

Historia chronike

John of Antioch's chronicle, Historia chronike, is a universal history stretching from Adam to the death of Phocas; it is one of the many adaptations and imitations of the better known chronicle of John Malalas. His sources include Eutropius (whose organization he followed) and Plutarch,^[2] as well as Sextus Julius Africanus, Eusebius, and Ammianus Marcellinus. It was divided into 14 books, of which the first 5 (the "Ancient History") covered the period from Creation up to the reign of Philip II of Macedon, the next 5 (the "Books of the Consuls", Ancient Greek: λόγοι ὑπάτων^[3]) covered the Roman Republic up to 30 BC, and the last 4 (the "Books of the Emperors") covered the Roman Empire through the reign of Phocas.^[4] A manuscript found in 1899 in the Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos preserves the entire 4th Book of the Consuls, plus the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 5th;^[5] of the rest of the chronicle only fragments remain. In the main extant section of the text, his method was in each book to summarize the corresponding book of Eutropius, with various added details (in the case of the surviving Book 4 mainly drawn from Plutarch's life of Sulla), and to add to each book a brief appendix on some matters not covered by Eutropius.^[6] He generally repeats even the mistakes made by Eutropius (e.g., conflating Attalus II and III), and sometimes adds his own misunderstandings of his historical sources (as when he declares that Sulla was dictator for two separate terms, or when he misinterprets ἱππεῖς in that context as cavalry soldiers).^[7]

The fragments of the chronicle are contained in two collections, the Codex Parisinus 1763, which was published in an edition by Claudius Salmasius, and the encyclopedia of history in fifty-three chapters made by order of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912–59), the so-called Excerpta Constantiniana. Of the Constantinian collection only parts remain.^[8] Two titles: "Of Virtue and Vice" and "Of Conspiracies against Emperors" contain the literary remains of John of Antioch. A difficulty arises from the fact that a great part of the extracts (from the Roman Commonwealth of Justin I) differs considerably from the corresponding quotations in the Salmasian collection. The Constantinian passages are of the nature the old Hellenic writing of history, the Salmasian ones are rather Byzantine and Christian. The Salmasian compilation is older, and so appears to be the original text; the other is no doubt a re-arrangement made under the influence of the Hellenic Renaissance started by patriarch Photius. But some authorities see in them two different originals and speak of a "Constantinian" and a "Salmasian" John of Antioch.

The Salmasian excerpts are edited by Cramer, Anecdota Graecae cod. mss. regiae Parisiensis, II, Oxford 1839, 383–401. Both series of fragments are in C. Muller, "Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum", vol. IV, Paris, 1883, 535–622; V, 27–8.

Influence

John of Antioch's history was evidently seen positively by the later Byzantine writers. Besides its inclusion in the Constantinian Excerpts, Maximus Planudes included fragments of it in an anthology of historians, and the Suda makes extensive use of it.^[9] However, as a mere epitome of earlier works, it is valued little by modern historians except as evidence about other Byzantine writers.^[10]

Editions

Mariev, Sergei (ed.). Ioannis Antiocheni fragmenta quae supersunt omnia. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae – Series Berolinensis, Volume 47. De Gruyter, 2008. doi:10.1515/9783110210316. Contains Greek text with English translation.

References

[1]
Gelzer, Sextus Julius Africanus, 41.
[2]
Walton, Francis R. (1965). "A Neglected Historical Text". Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. 14 (2). JSTOR 4434879. Logos IV demonstrates clearly the method followed by John of Antioch in compiling this part of his work. The framework is provided by Eutropius, for whom he used a translation more faithful than that of Paeanius, perhaps the lost translation of Capito. Logos IV corresponds to Book V of the Breviarium, which it translates entire, and Logos V starts at precisely the same point as Book VI, in 78 B.C. John of Antioch, however, adds to his translation a good deal of additional material, ranging in extent from a few words to entire paragraphs or more. Much of the additional material is taken from Plutarch's Sulla, and it is significant that in the non-Eutropian passages Plutarch is seven times cited by name. One citation of Plutarch, as we shall see, corresponds to nothing in the known works of that author, but the others are identifiable and reasonably accurate. There is no reason whatever to doubt that John of Antioch was personally familiar with the Sulla, and that he used it with some discretion to amplify the meagre narrative of Eutropius. To what extent he drew directly from other classical authors is uncertain. The references to Sulla's Memoirs come from Plutarch. His quotation of Sallust's epigrammatic comment on Sulla hardly constitutes proof that he had read the Catilina. For the two citations of Diodorus and one of Livy we have no control, since the episodes would have appeared in the lost portions of their works, but as we shall see the passage sealed with their joint names might equally well have been ascribed to Plutarch, who gives the same information in nearly identical language.
[3]
Walton (1965).
[4]
Whately, Conor (2012-10-26). "John of Antioch". The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Wiley.
[5]
Walton (1965): "The first article published by Spyridon Lambros in his remarkable one-man periodical, Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, was an extensive passage from the lost Chronicle of John of Antioch, preserved in a fourteenth-century manuscript in the monastery of Iviron (Codex Athous 4932 = Iviron 812). ... The first public announcement of it was made in 1899 at the Congress of Orientalists held in Rome... The Athos text belongs to the part of the work devoted to Republican Rome. This section, it now appears, was divided into chapters or books entitled λόγοι ὑπάτων. What is here preserved is the entire text of λόγος ὑπάτων δ', plus the end of the third "Account" and the beginning of the fifth."
[6]
Walton (1965): "At the end of the [4th] Logos, following the Eutropian material and a long additional passage on Sulla (the original of fr. 68), John of Antioch has added a short appendix, chiefly concerned with Eastern affairs not recorded in Eutropius. This section goes well beyond the chronological limits allowed by his model, to which, however, he punctiliously returns at the beginning of Logos V. The end of Logos III, all that survives of that book, suggests that it was his normal practice to assemble material not relevant to Eutropius' narrative in such an appendix. Here again it is the East that interests him."
[7]
Walton (1965).
[8]
Krumbacher, Byzantinische Litteraturgeschichte, 258–60.
[9]
Walton (1965).
[10]
Walton (1965): "The response [to the publication of the Athos manuscript] was in fact surprisingly slight. Mommsen was already dead, and Lambros himself never found time to return to the subject. Possibly the first issue of the new periodical did not gain wide circulation outside of Greece. A few Greek readers of the Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων proposed emendations that were published in subsequent issues. Büttner-Wobst and Adler took cognizance of the text for their editions, respectively, of the Constantinian Excerpta de virtutibus et vitiis (Pars I) and of the 'Suda'. Finally, the relation of our author, on the one hand to Eutropius and his Greek translators, on the other to the Excerpta Planudea and to the 'Suda', were re-explored. Otherwise, so far as I have been able to determine, there is nothing. On the historical content of the passage, hardly a word!"

Bibliography

Fortescue, A. (1910). "John of Antioch". In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved May 23, 2009 from New Advent.

Bibliography

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