Chronicle Writing in Late Antiquity

Abstract No manuscript title for Marcellinus’ chronicle survives except those inserted by medieval scribes. In fact the chronicle may not have had its own title,just a statement of transition from Jerome’s chronicle which it was continuing.’ Like so many other such chronicles, Marcellinus’ work was merely another brick in a larger edifice thereby requiring no separate titular justification.’ His coeval Cassiodorus, however, implicitly labels the work chronica and recommends it in the course of his discussion of works under that label (Inst. r. 17). Cassiodorus obviously had a clear understanding of what he meant by ‘chronicle’ since in 519, shortly after Marcellinus, he himself produced a work with precisely that title.Eusebius of Caesarea, Cassiodorus states, wrote chronica in Greek which Jerome translated into Latin and con tinued to the death of the emperor Valens (378). This work was continued by Prosper and by Marcellinus to the early years of the reign of Justinian (534 in fact).Thanks to Cassiodorus’ endorsement there are several manuscripts of the chronicle of Marcellinus, as there are for Prosper, whereas other chronicles have not survived at all or only in a single manuscript. This fate applies especially to the continuators of Marcellinus and Prosper, both in Cassiodorus’ own lifetime and later. Only one continuation of Marcellinus is extant.