Download PDF | The History of Zonaras From Alexander Severus to the death of Theodosius the Great [for A.D. 222-395] , Routledge 2009.
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THE HISTORY OF ZONARAS
While an exile from Constantinople, the twelfth-century Byzantine functionary and canonist John Zonaras culled earlier chronicles and histories to compose an account of events from creation to the reign of Alexius Comnenus. For topics where his sources are lost or appear elsewhere in more truncated form, his testimony and the identification of the texts on which he depends are of critical importance.
For his account of the first two centuries of the Principate, Zonaras employed now-lost portions of Cassius Dio. From the point where Dio’s History ended, to the reign of Theodosius the Great (d. 395), he turned to other sources to produce a uniquely full historical narrative of the critical years 235—395, making Books XII.15—XIII.19 of the Epitome central to the study of both late Roman history and late Roman and Byzantine historiography.
This key section of the Epitome, together with Zonaras’ Prologue, here appears in English for the first time, both complemented by a historical and historiographical commentary. A special feature of the latter is a first-ever English translation of a broad range of sources that illuminate Zonaras’ account and the historiographical traditions it reflects. Among the authors whose newly translated works occupy a prominent place in the commentary are George Cedrenus, George the Monk, John of Antioch, Peter the Patrician, Symeon Magister, and Theodore Scutariotes. Specialized indices facilitate the use of the translations and commentary alike.
The result is an invaluable guide and stimulus to further research for scholars and students of the history and historiography of Rome and Byzantium.
Thomas M. Banchich is Professor of Classics and History at Canisius College, Buffalo, New York. His research interests include ancient philosophy, history, and historiography.
The late Eugene N. Lane was Professor of Classics at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
INTRODUCTION The Epitome of Histories
John Zonaras’ Epitome of Histories recounts events from creation through the death of the emperor Alexius Comnenus in 1118— about 6,619 years by Byzantine reckoning. Composed in the first half of the twelfth century and the most substantial extant historical work written in Greek between Cassius Dio’s Roman History of the early third century AD and the fall of Constantinople, it comprises three substantial volumes and slightly more than 1,700 pages of text in its best modern edition.! The production of the original copy would have required much time, labor, and expense: the large number of manuscripts of the Epitome and its early translation into a number of languages are measures of the esteem it long commanded.? Yet since the advent of modern scholarship in the nineteenth century, few have thought there was any good reason to read the whole Epitome, fewer have attempted to do so, and fewer still have finished the job.
This was not so much because the Epitome was dull or inaccurate as because it was largely derivative. Indeed, Zonaras explains in his Prologue that he aimed at originality only in his wish to make earlier histories more accessible by presenting them in a new fashion. For him this entailed staking out a middle ground between barebones abbreviation and overly detailed recapitulation. He would eschew speeches and learned excurses, but, at the same time, maintain a style, tone, and level of engagement with his material worthy of an intelligent readership. In the event, the outcome was neither proper history in a classicizing mode nor chronicle, but a unique epitome of histories, and it is precisely this that effected the neglect into which the Epitome eventually fell, for why read the Epitome when other, better guides—sometimes Zonaras' actual sources—were available??
But before this could happen, those sources had to be identified and weighed against the content of the Epitome. Much scholarly energy was and, as evidenced by this book, continues to be expended in this exercise of Quellenforschung. On three points consensus has emerged: Zonaras’ treatment of the Roman republic, dependent on lost books of Cassius Dio, is fundamental to our knowledge of that period; Zonaras’ account of Roman history from Alexander Severus through Theodosius the Great—our most detailed continuous Byzantine narrative of that span and one that depends on sources no longer extant—is equally important for a historical understanding of that period and for a critical assessment of the historiographical traditions upon which our literary sources for the era depend; and Zonaras’ account of Alexius Comnenus is highly distinctive and, perhaps, uniquely informative.*
For Byzantinists, this last consideration has resulted in an increased interest in other sections of the Epitome as a way to gauge whether some of Zonaras negative comments about Alexius are part of a broader historically and constitutionally based critique of the position of emperor and of individual emperors, prompted, perhaps, by the impact of Alexius on Zonaras' own life.?
John Zonaras
Zonaras' reputation as a writer rested among his contemporaries, as it rests today, on his exegesis of sacred canons and on his Epitome of Histories. We know little about his life. The offices of Grand Commander of the Palace Watch (Megas Drouggarios 16s Biglas) and First Secretary of the Chancery (Prétoasékrités), both duly noted in headings of several manuscripts of his works, mark the apex of his public career.° They betray his elite origins and, by their wholly legalistic functions, offer our only clue to his formal education, though they by no means imply that Zonaras had a narrow legal training.’ After all, the same system had produced the historians John Scylitzes and Michael Attaliates, the former a Grand Commander of the Palace Watch, the latter a distinguished judge.? Within this curriculum, history functioned as a repository of exempla, a guide to precedent and tradition, and a means of judging the original contexts of specific laws and the powers and prerogatives behind them. Concord between canon and secular law, when both were properly understood, would have been an unstated assumption: in his capacity as a highranking civil servant, Zonaras' duty would have been to Church and State, a unity subsumed under the umbrella of Orthodoxy. At some point—perhaps only then taking the name John—he retreated to the monastery of St Glyceria on present-day Ineir Adasi in the Bay of Tuzla, where he completed his Epitome of Histories in time for the mid-twelfth-century historian Michael Glycas to quote him by name.” The date, place, and circumstances of his death are unknown. 1°
Scholars most often set Zonaras' service in the imperial court during the reign of Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118). His withdrawal from public life they regularly link to intrigue contingent on the accession of John II Comnenus in the face of opposition from Nicephorus Bryennius, Alexius' caesar and the husband of Anna Comnena, daughter of Alexius and sister of John. Zonaras, they hold, had backed the wrong horse, and, in a fate parallel to that of Anna, was sentenced by her brother to trade court for cloister.'!
The principal reasons for the association of Zonaras' career with Alexius' reign are the terminus of the Epitome of Histories, which abruptly ends with Alexius' death, and its sometimes-harsh portrait of that emperor and his policies. However, Zonaras is explicit that his departure from Constantinople was his own decision, made in light of personal losses. If we take him at his word, this voluntary retirement might just as easily have occurred before or shortly after Alexius won the throne from Nicephorus III Botaniates (r. 1078—1081)." After all, Botaniates' views on the proper constitutional relationship between emperor, senate, and church correspond closely to Zonaras’ own but clash with those of Alexius.'? By the same token, Zonaras’ public career and withdrawal could fall in the reign of Alexius’ successors John (1118-1143) or, less likely, Manuel Comnenus (1143—1180).
Prosopographic data afford only minimal help. Sources often fail to differentiate between several types of drungarii. To complicate matters, because drungarii had no set tenure, one cannot simply weigh the relative merits of those years in which no drungarius is named to choose a niche for Zonaras. Only two Grand Commanders of the Palace Watch—John (perhaps Scylitzes), from the theme Thrakesion, who, in March 1092, had bumped heads with Alexius Comnenus over the issue of the dissolution of betrothals, and Nicholas Mermentolus, who attended the Synod of the Blachernae in 1094—1095——can be securely dated to Alexius’ reign.'4 Among the prominent members of the Zonaras family active between ca. 1075 and the reign of Manuel Comnenus, Naucratius Zonaras, a highly esteemed monk of St Glyceria and former drungarius who helped finance the reconstruction of a church in the monastery around the late 1120s, is particularly noteworthy. This Naucratius may be Nicholas Zonaras (Nikolaus 20158, PBW), though that would put two Zonarases—John and Naucratius/Nicholas—who had been drungarius in St Glyceria at or about the same time. On the other hand, Naucratius may, in fact, be John, author of the Epitome.’ Even so, this would still not tell us when he arrived, though it would rule out the reign of Manuel Comnenus.
Additional clues from the Epitome may permit greater precision. Zonaras states that a long interval separated his retreat from public life and the beginning of his work on the Epitome, the result of the incessant promptings of friends. Furthermore, his description of himself as at that time “intellectually lax . . . and passing life in lethargy” implies that significant time had elapsed since he had engaged in any writing (Prologue 1 {I, p. 3.2] and 2 IL, p. 7.10—12D. This is a far cry from the situation he says prevailed when he turned to interpretation of the canons:
Let no one accuse me of rashness. For I did not undertake the work on my own initiative, but, when I had been summoned, I shouldered the burden and devoted myself to the job, in order that I not be condemned because of inattentiveness.
(R-P II, pp. 1-2)
In this case, it was probably an emperor who "summoned" Zonaras to canonical exegesis and whose potential condemnation "because of inattentiveness" worried him, while a real or feigned concern with being judged rash by his colleagues, in turn, fits a man just entering his prime as drungarius rather than a seasoned retiree in a monastery.
On the basis of this reconstruction, Manuel Comnenus appears impossibly late to deserve consideration as the ruler who pointed Zonaras to the canons. His reign commenced in 1143 and the Epitome was available to Glycas by the middle of the twelfth century. Botaniates’ reign (1078—1081), on the other hand, seems too early to have Zonaras win that emperor's confidence and then, after retirement, produce a substantial number of compositions over what obviously was a significant duration of time. Alexius Aristenus, who joins Zonaras and Theodore Balsamon to form the trio of great Byzantine canonists, probably took his mandate from John II Comnenus, and it is difficult to imagine that John would have set both Zonaras and Aristenus to the same task. Conversely, Alexius Comnenus' reign is the most suitable, not only on chronological grounds, but in light of Zonaras comments about the patriarchs Cosmas I (1075-1081), Eustratius (1081—1084), Nicholas III (1084-111), and John IX Agapetus (1111-1134).
In a passage that reflects the standard literary assessment of Cosmas, Zonaras describes him as a monk unversed in intellectual matters but of exemplary virtue.'’ By comparison, his judgments of Eustratius as a eunuch monk both unversed in intellectual matters and incompetent when it came to practical affairs, “a dunce and more suited for solitude or some corner,” and of Nicholas as “a monk, nicknamed ‘the Grammarian,' . . . not unfamiliar with intellectual culture, though he did not partake of this to a high degree” are pointed and personal.!? Zonaras never names John Agapetus, but contrasts him with his predecessors:
{John} was, on the one hand, one of the clergy of the church and, indeed, of the degree of che deacons and ranked among the patriarchal officials, one the other, he was a nephew of the one then in charge of the church in Chalcedon {Anonymus 6073, PBW], reared in secular and sacred matters of the intellect, the sovereign himself having attended the church and selected him therein.
(XVIII.25.8 I[III, p. 2-8})
The tenures of Nicholas and John, a period of negotiation between the church and Alexius, saw a growing concern with interpretation of the sacred canons on the part of both interested parties, and Zonaras comments likely reflect his recollections of his perceptions as a drungarius, confident of his own cultural refinement and dismissive of what he perceived as monkish ignorance: they afford a convincing context for Zonaras' summons to the study of the canons.'? Attempts between 1089 and 1112 to define more clearly the relationship between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople also mesh with Zonaras' carefully considered comments on this issue.?? This does not require Zonaras completion of his canonical commentaries before his retirement, only that the work was well under way and finished in time to allow for the interval of inactivity—a time when Zonaras confesses that his mind was not employed in any worthy task— which preceded the composition of the Epitome. Before that break must also have been the occasion for his other treatises, some tending toward the historical, but all closely concerned with matters more appropriate to a monk than a drungarius.?!
By the time Zonaras turned to the reign of Alexius Comnenus, about a quarter of a century would have passed since his departure from Constantinople. One might expect to detect some differences in his exposition of matters at court after this withdrawal, as a consequence of his reliance on informants or written sources as opposed to autopsy, and such appears to be the case from Zonaras’ account of the defeat of the Frank Bohemund in 1107 (XVIII.25.7 {III, p. 750.15-17D to the end of Book XVIII. Chronological vagueness, confusion about incidents and personalities, and the omission of significant events are commonplace.?? Of course, some of this would have been the result of Zonaras' own hazy recollections of the distant past and of old axes to grind. At the same time, one must not forget that Zonaras was an epitomizer: he brought special qualities to that role, but he was not a historian. Whatever the precise explanation behind specific passages that exhibit these qualities, their ubiquity, particularly when opposed to the vivid precision of the initial portion of Book XVIII, points again to the final years of the patriarchate of Nicholas or the very beginning of that of John as the time when Zonaras took his leave of the Queen of Cities. His criticisms of Alexius and some of what transpired during his reign are not due to harsh feelings that resulted from some hypothetical exile at the emperor's command nor, since the finished Epitome would antedate Anna Comnena's Alexiad, do they represent a rejoinder to Anna's laudatory portrait of her father; they reflect the considered judgment of Zonaras the drungarius as remembered by Zonaras the monk. The sole obstacle to this reconstruction occurs at the end of Zonaras' interpretation of Canon 6 of the Council of Caesarea:
“A presbyter is not to celebrate weddings of those marrying twice. Since, when the twice-married is petitioning repentance, who will be the presbyter, he, chrough the celebration, sanctioning the weddings?"
Zonaras: "The second marriage is subject to penalty, for it is barred from Holy Communion for a year. That being the case, ‘What sort of priest will he be, seeming to condone the second marriage through his presence?' says the canon. That is to say, how will one, approving the second marriage through his presence, not be ashamed penalizing one who is twice-married? But these are in writing [Ze they are dead-letter]. By us a patriarch was seen, and various metropolitans, engaging in [wedding] festivities with a sovereign who had been married twice?" (R-P II, p. 80])
Some have identified Manuel Comnenus as the "sovereign who had been married twice." If this is correct, Manuel's marriage in 1161 would furnish a terminus ante quem for this interpretation and perhaps, by extension, for Zonaras’ activity as a canonist. However, “But these things are in writing. By us a patriarch was seen, and various metropolitans, engaging in [wedding] festivities with a sovereign who had been married twice” may well be an interpolation rather than Zonaras’ sentiment. Its opening is unparalleled in Zonaras' exegesis, and the sentiment is as much a reaction to the body of the gloss as it is to the actual canon. Moreover, if Zonaras is the author, the emperor in question may be Nicephorus Botaniates.
Botaniates, in fact, married three times. His second wife, Vevdene, became empress when Botaniates was crowned, and she died shortly thereafter. He then married Maria Alania, former wife of the vanquished Michael VII Ducas, Botaniates’ exiled adversary. Though Zonaras does not mention the second marriage, his censure of the third as “boldfaced adultery” reveals he knew of it. In light of the other evidence for the chronology of Zonaras’ life, then, the case for the wedding of Botaniates to Vevdene as the inspiration for the closing comments of the interpretation of Canon 7 is far stronger than is that for the second marriage of Manuel Comneus.?? Thus, if it tells us anything about Zonaras’ life, it would be that Zonaras himself saw the patriarch Cosmas and various metropolitans at the marriage of Botaniates and Vevdene in 1078.
On this reckoning, Zonaras was probably in his twenties around 1079. The prime of his public life would have been during the patriarchate of Nicholas and, perhaps, early in that of John Agapetus, at which time, probably on Alexius’ orders, he began his work on the sacred canons. When, late in Nicholas’ tenure, or early in John’s, ca. 1112, some personal loss precipitated his retirement, he would have been in his fifties. He initially produced several modest works and, if he had not already completed his canonical commentaries, finished this project. Subsequent to a period of inactivity, he was convinced to begin the Epitome. Sometime before 1134, when, after a lengthy period of composition, Zonaras brought this work to its abrupt conclusion, he would have been in his seventies. He allows that there was more ground to cover, but it was not “profitable or opportune” to do so. This has generally been understood as a reference to the uncertainty of current events—some military campaign, for example. However, Zonaras could just as easily be referring to himself: the labor he had expended had served its purpose and, either because of his age or health, he decided to put down his pen.
Zonaras and Quellenforschung
Quellenforschung is the investigation of interrelationships between extant sources, the delineation of traditions evidenced by those sources, and the identification and reconstruction of missing links in those traditions. A series of articles by Edwin Patzig set the course of modern investigations of Zonaras’ sources, the sources drawn upon by other Byzantine historians and chroniclers, and their connections. One of Patzig’s most important conclusions with regard to Zonaras’ account of AD 222-395 was that comparison between the Chronicle of Leo Grammaticus (read in Bekker's deeply flawed Bonn edition and now properly edited as the work of Simeon Magister [mid-tenth c., ODB IIl, pp. 1982-1983, s.v. Symeon Logothete}), George Cedrenus (twelfth c., ODB II, p. 1118), the Synopis Chroniké first published by Constantine Sathas (now identified as the work of Theodore Scutariotes [thirteenth c., ODB III, pp. 1912-1913}, and, as they appeared in Müller's FHG, the fragments of John of Antioch (seventh c., ODB II, p. 1062) and the so-called Anonymus post Dionem or Anonymous Continuator of Cassius Dio (the latter now regularly identified with Peter the Patrician [sixth c., ODB III, p. 1641} revealed three lost sources, dubbed by Patzig the Synopsisquelle, the Leoquelle, and the Zwillingsquelle. Patzig further maintained that when Zonaras reached the point in his narrative where he could no longer rely on Dio and Herodian he took the Synopsisquelle as one of his principal guides. From Diocletian’s through Theodosius’ reigns and beyond, however, Patzig held that the influence of the Synopsisquelle was relatively minor compared to that of the Leoguelle and Zwillingsquelle. Finally, he argued for the identification of the Leoquelle with John of Antioch, who, Patzig thought, had used the Anonymous Continuator (= Peter the Patrician) as one of his guides.?*
Almost a century after Patzig, Michael DiMaio revisited the source problem and, once again, argued for Zonaras’ indebtedness to John of Antioch, who, DiMaio thought, had transmitted to Zonaras material from Greek translations of Eutropius’ Breviarium and Ammianus Marcellinus’ Res Gestae. Furthermore, DiMaio sought to demonstrate that Zonaras had directly consulted a number of sources —for example, Julian the Apostate and Philostorgius—considered by Patzig to have been known to Zonaras only indirectly through the hypothesized Synopisquelle, Leoquelle, and Zwillingsquelle.?
The connection between John of Antioch and Zonaras, so central to the views of Patzig and DiMaio, was broken, so it seemed, by Panagiotis Sotiroudis.*° Both Patzig and DiMaio had known full well that a large number of the fragments of John as printed by Miiller were preserved in the EH of Constantine Porphyrogenitus but that another substantial group survived separately in what had come to be referred to as the Excerpta Salmasiana, named for Claude de Saumaise (1588-1653), who had copied them from the sole manuscript in which they survived.” Patzig himself had noted that correspondences between John and the Leoguelle almost always involved these Salmasian fragments. Thus, when Sotiroudis made a strong case against assigning the Salmasian excerpts to John of Antioch, it necessarily followed that the Leoquelle, too, had to assume a new identity.
Bruno Bleckmann proposed Virius Nicomachus Flavianus (15, PLRE I, pp. 347—349), an identification that attracted as much support from continental scholars as it did opposition from their Anglophone counterparts.?? Bleckmann's argument accepted Patzig's Leoquelle but, in place of the apparently discredited connection with John of Antioch, substituted Nicomachus as filtered partly through Peter the Patrician and the Salmasian excerpts. The opposition generally directed its attacks against the identification of Nicomachus but accepted that Sotiroudis had effectively eliminated John of Antioch from consideration.
Umberto Roberto's first critical edition of the fragments of John has now demonstrated that Sotiroudis was mistaken and returned the debate to the state it was in prior to the now unnecessary distinction between John of Antioch and the author of the Salmasian excerpts.??
But how did Byzantine authors know John's work? The compilers of the EH had it before them, but, as is evident from a comparison of excerpts in the EH from authors who survive independently, e.g. Thucydides, they routinely adapted passages for incorporation into the various volumes of the EH. Likewise, the lexicographers of the Suda, who drew the bulk of their historical entries, including portions of John of Antioch, from the EH rather than directly from the texts of the historians in question, regularly further altered their material. The paradoxical result is that texts of authors thought to have drawn directly upon works otherwise preserved in the EH and Suda may more accurately reflect their sources than do the actual “fragments” of those sources. This alone makes it dangerous to evaluate the relationship between the Epitome of Zonaras and the lost Chronicle of John of Antioch simply on the basis of a comparison of sections of the Epitome with the fragments of John. Assembling parallels between Zonaras and such authors as Symeon Magister and Theodore Scutariotes (Patzig’s Leo and Synopsis Chroniké) may provide a control, though strictures identical to those that apply to Zonaras would hold equally true for them, and, of course, the greater the remove either forward or backward in time from John’s text, various permutations of intermediate adaptations become ever more probable.
Additional and too-often-forgotten complicating factors are mistakes of the eye or ear or intentional adaptations in the process of manuscript transmission. Numbers and names are notoriously susceptible to scribal error or alteration. Interpolation poses another, particularly serious, obstacle to the deduction of sources through the standard method of a comparison of texts. Because parallels may result from the insertion of material from a manuscript of a later author into a manuscript of an earlier author, equal attention must be paid to the relative chronologies of manuscripts and of authors. Distinctive accounts of identical subjects in manuscripts of the same author, too, may arise from interpolation. Thus, those manuscripts that provide the fullest detail are not necessarily the safest guide to what their author wrote. Staffan Wahlgren’s excellent critical edition of Symeon Magister, for instance, has revealed that Bekker’s text, the basis for the so-called Leoquelle, was replete with interpolations and, consequently, grossly unsuited to serve the role it has played since Patzig’s day. Indeed, this great advance warns that, even with the publication of Wahlgren’s Symeon, Roberto’s John of Antioch, and Raimondo Tocci’s Scutariotes, the conclusions of any investigation of Zonaras’ sources for his account of AD 222-395 will be severely compromised so long as there is no scholarly edition of the Chronicle of George Cedrenus. Even then, the elucidation of broad strands of tradition and the identification of some of the authors who comprise them may well be the greatest degree of precision the evidence allows.?!
One further, and potentially important, observation remains. David Pingree has convincingly argued that the horoscope attributed to Valens and noted both by Zonaras and Cedrenus was cast around 990.?? Since the EH of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (r. 908—959, sole emperor 945—959) predates the horoscope, it is possible that the common source of Zonaras and Cedrenus had access to the EH. Within each thematic volume of the EH, excerpts are organized by author and, so far as we can tell, reflect the order in which they appeared in each author's work. This arrangement would lend itself to the discovery of variant versions of the same topic or of unique information within a particular category, both distinguishing features of the Epitome. Likewise, use of the EH or of a source that has used the EH would result in a pastiche of material from those authors included in the EH, another characteristic of the Epitome. Of course, Zonaras’ or his sources’ direct consultation of a range of works in the course of researching specific individuals and events would yield identical results. Nonetheless, use of the EH, especially by a source shared by Zonaras and Cedrenus, must be reckoned a very real possibility and dictates an adjustment to the application of the techniques of Quellenforschung to Zonaras.
Principles of translation
Despite its significance for late antique history and historiography, since the sixteenth century there has been no translation of or commentary on Books XII.15—XIII.19 of the Epitome in any modern language other than Iordanes Gregoriades’ modern Greek version.??
The immediate impetus to remedy this situation came in the form of a suggestion from Michael DiMaio to Banchich that they revise and perhaps expand DiMaio’s earlier translation of and commentary on Zonaras’ account of the Neo-Flavians.*4 Banchich proposed the chronological termini of Alexander Severus and Theodosius largely due to his interest in source problems associated with that section of the Epitome. At that point, DiMaio invited Eugene Lane, Jacqueline Long, and William Leadbetter aboard. Ultimately, this translationby-committee approach fell by the wayside and Banchich returned to the Greek to produce a wholly new translation of Zonaras’ Prologue, Books XII.15—XIII.19, and Postscript, all of which Lane alone critiqued. The resultant translation, then, is Banchich’s, often adjusted and improved in response to suggestions by Lane. When ill health eventually forced Lane (d. January 1, 2007) to become a silent partner in work on the translation, Banchich saw this facet of the project through to its end. Complaints about the result should be set at his door.
The basis of the translation of Zonaras is the edition of Pinder and Biittner-Wobst. This applies, too, to chapter divisions and pagination, the latter given within brackets throughout the translation, to proper names—for example, “Gallerius” rather than "Galerius" and “Constas” rather than “Constantius Chlorus"—and to the distinction between numerical notation as opposed to names of numbers. Most proper names appear in their Latinate forms— for example, "Aurelianus" rather than "Aurelian"—the principal exceptions being Diocletian, Constantine, and Julian the Apostate. References in the commentary or index of proper names to PIR, PLRE, or EEC entries should eliminate confusion. "Sovereign" renders the Greek basileus, Zonaras’ term for a broad range of rulers, and “usurper” tyrannos.°
The translation preserves the syntax of the original, not because of stylistic virtuosity on Zonaras’ part but rather because shifts in diction and vocabulary may suggest shifts in sources, changes in Zonaras’ estimation of how to present a particular topic, or some other variable. Moreover, this approach maximizes the potential to appreciate, even in translation, the relationship between the Epitome of Histories and the broad range of parallel texts translated in the accompanying commentary. Of course, this would be true only if translations of those texts adhered to the same principles as those employed in the translation of Zonaras himself. Such, indeed, has been the case with regard to all texts translated in the commentary, many of which appear there for the first time in any modern language. Even where excellent translations existed—for example, Roberto’s Italian John of Antioch, Paschoud’s French or Ridley’s English Zosimus, or Amidon’s English Philostorgius*°—the purpose of their comparison with Zonaras and one another necessitated re-renderings into English governed by common principles. In the few instances where Greek words have been retained, they are transliterated.
Scope and purpose of the commentary
The commentary’s foremost aim is to elucidate Zonaras’ testimony in so far as it pertains to historical and historiographic issues. It provides only enough information about the historical context of the content of particular passages—who was doing what to whom at what time and where—to achieve that end. Issues of why things happened or why people behaved as they did take a back seat throughout to the issue of why Zonaras says what he says. For the history of the period, as opposed to Zonaras’ take on that history, scholarship abounds.*’
This focus explains why the commentary only incidentally mentions epigraphic, papyrological, and archaeological evidence and takes no notice of numismatic evidence, for, though central to modern historical research and reconstruction, these are almost absent from the pages of the Epitome. Though the commentary rarely refers to literary evidence that does not contribute to understanding Zonaras, it does direct readers toward appropriate entries in the standard prosopographies, repositories of such information.
The period from Alexander Severus through Theodosius is a subject of immense international interest, which manifests itself in erudite articles and monographs, in the publication in various forms of new evidence or collections of evidence, and in broad, sometimes highly interpretive, narrative accounts. The fires of international scholarship have been fueled by learned commentaries on key texts (Francois Paschoud’s on Zosimus, for example), more-accurate or first-ever translations (pride of place in the English-speaking category occupied by the volumes of the TTH series), and the replacement of antiquated and often substandard editions by their first modern counterparts. The scholarly literature on AD 222-395 is, then, immense. That said, this commentary offers only slim guidance to modern scholarship. The justification is threefold: only rarely do judgments in the commentary about what Zonaras says and why derive from modern scholarship as opposed to autopsy of primary texts; the inclusion of mainly illustrative bibliographic entries, no matter how useful, would have necessitated a much, much bigger book; and, finally, several repositories of such references already exist.??
As the commentary took shape, each chapter of Zonaras and a broad range of ancient texts that dealt with the same content were studied in the original and points of contact, agreement, divergence, and outright contradiction duly noted. Historical glosses—dates, comments on and identification of people and places, and the like— were added. When this lengthy process was complete, the results for each chapter were compared and broader patterns of relevance or irrelevance for the business of understanding Zonaras’ Epitome began to emerge. There followed a pruning of much of the material collected earlier but subsequently revealed as irrelevant or tangential to the commentary’s concerns. Of course, what has been jettisoned must not be automatically equated with what Zonaras himself or his sources knew but chose to ignore or omit.
The commentary consequently changed from a kind of variorum collection of literary sources for the period in question to an exposition and analysis of material important for understanding the Epitome. In the process, it became clear that Zonaras, Symeon Magister (earlier scholarship’s Leo Grammaticus), George Cedrenus, and Theodore Scutariotes (the author of an anonymous chronicle previously referred to by the name of Constantine Sathas, its initial editor), though independent of one another, reflect a common tradition. It also became obvious that Theodore Lector’s Historia Tripartita (sixth c., ODB III, p. 2042) was an important element in the tradition upon which the Epitome depends. To a degree, this was nothing new. However, scholars generally had been more concerned with working backward for the sake of getting closer to earlier strata of sources than in appreciating the nexus of sources closest in time to Zonaras, whether before or after he wrote, and Zonaras’ place in it. Yet the commentary regularly demonstrates that it is the light shed on Zonaras by those chronologically closest to him that illuminates most clearly certain of their shadowy predecessors. This would seem to offer an opportunity for those involved in study of such matters to reassess and, perhaps, refine their reconstructions of the historiographical traditions upon which Zonaras depended.
To this end, a prominent feature of the commentary is the presentation of translations in parallel columns. When so arranged, texts appear in ascending chronological order from left to right. Because so many of the authors referred to are unfamiliar except to specialists, most of the commentary’s citations of primary sources are more precise than is normally necessary. This applies especially to fragmentary authors, whose remains often appear in multiple collections of such material, each with its own special merits. In contrast, in the case of mainstream classical authors such as Homer and Plutarch or a few late antique texts available in multiple critical editions and in translations that include detailed textual divisions—for example, Ammianus Marcellinus—citations generally provide only standard textual divisions without the volume numbers and pagination of specific editions or translations.
In matters of absolute chronology, the commentary generally follows Dietmar Kienast’s Römische Kaisertabelle, the PIR or PIR?, and, for dates later than 260, PLRE, all sometimes supplemented by D-L for military campaigns and for ecclesiastical chronology by the EEC. For the chronology of the tetrarchic period, the reigns of Constantine and his sons, and ecclesiastical matters during the reign of Constantius II, Timothy Barnes’ New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine and Athanasius and Constantius were sure guides.??
While the commentary's repeated references to the PIR, PIR’, and PLRE both secure the identity of specific individuals and lead those interested to citations of primary evidence critical for the careers of those same individuals but outside the purview of the commentary itself, the primary rationale for references to the EEC is its sound treatments of individuals and events and its up-to-date bibliographies in a number of languages.
The few instances where the commentary cites modern studies indicate particular indebtedness, originality, or thoroughness. That such references are almost always to scholarship in English, should not obscure the international character of the best research on Roman, Late Antique, and Byzantine history. The decision not to include maps was made easier by the fact that most locations mentioned by Zonaras seem to have been little more than names to him: for such matters readers should consult the authoritative Barrington Atlas and the series of maps in the relevant volumes of Paschoud’s Zosimus.^ They would be well advised, too, to read the Epitome with a list of emperors and usurpers between 222 and 395 at hand in order to gauge who is missing from Zonaras emperor-centered history." The “Index of passages cited" (pp. 290—301) contains some basic information about the authors listed therein.
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