Byzantine Historical Writing

Abstract Byzantine historians belonged to officialdom, lay and clerical. They operated within the classical and late antique traditions of historiography. They were primarily concerned with politics, diplomacy, and warfare. Their works were of two types, historical compendia (written in a relatively plain style) and fuller, contemporary histories (with pretensions to classicism), both of which absorbed the previously separate genre of ecclesiastical history. Two general surveys of historical writing between 600 and 1200 (the second focused on chronicles, a subset of historical compendia) are preceded by a chapter on the importance of documentary sources qua purveyors of the basic, detailed information from which Byzantine historians, as well as their classical and late antique predecessors, constructed their narratives. Certain historians and their works (selected because there is something novel to be said about them) are then subjected to close scrutiny and appraisal. Procopius, who bucks the trend in his relative disregard for official documentation, becomes a military architect. Theophanes’ contemporary history, which makes full use of government bulletins, is attributed to his mentor George Synkellos. A surprising amount of non-documentary material is included in Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ De administrando imperio, a diplomatic handbook, the core of which is attributed to Leo VI. The so-called Chronicle of the Logothete is redated a good generation after the last event recorded. The final three chapters hammer in the argument that Anna Komnene’s husband was responsible for most of the document-based content of her Alexiad.