Eustathius

Yesterday was slow-enough I just let that gamer-thing get poasted; today there might be something. Well, from last year: Warren Treadgold on Eustathius of Epiphania.

We deal here with Byzantine historical-memory, again. Various mediaeval Greek-speaking world-historians reached back to AD sixth-century John Malalas of Antioch and another John of that city. That second John Antiochene's text is less datable because... we don't own it; its content is had from a third John, the mediaeval Zonaras. Treadgold would ponder whom Malalas and deutero-Antiochene used. Treadgold has identified their fundamental basis: Ammianus Marcellinus. This article handles the inevitable side-question: how?

Ammianus' earlier books are famously lost. Their reconstruction is highly desired, even for their own sake, because Ammianus is regarded in the top rank of Roman historians, as Malalas is not. This involves a synoptic-problem between the two Johns: their shared lore includes lore Ammianus did not use, not least the Greek language (so later Latins like Nicomachus Flavianus are ruled out). It happens Constantinople hosted fewer Latins in the sixth- and earliest seventh-century than she had in Ammianus' time. The "easiest" solution is parallel to Goodacre's solution: one used the other. But no-one has figured out how to order the twain.

One reason to hope for a Quelle before Malalas is that then we get to ignore Malalas, whose history is bad by constrast with his namesake compatriot and perhaps-contemporary. Also maybe we can get a proper edition of that other John; the last decade's two (rival) editions are an embarrassment to the field.

Treadgold for that (Greek) Quelle names its author, that Eustathius. Eustathius read Ammianus' Latin, sketched out a cursory summary in his own language, and compiled his own (shorter) world-history around that frame. That history stretches to the AD 503 Sasanian conquest of Amida before breaking off untimely; for that end, Treadgold argues that its author died in the AD 526 west-Syrian earthquake. One of the two Antiochene Joannae may have been aware of the other, or even consulted each other; but Eustathius, preserved in Antioch, made their basis. Meanwhile Ammianus never did get the full Greek treatment.

If Treadgold is right: the other John can be firmly placed in the seventh-century, and his refusal of Malalas' gharîb is easily explicable as distrust of Malalas.

Gavin Kelly is editing a new Ammianus. It may be better for scholarship if he avoid the earlier books, and instead reconstruct *Eustathius.