The Historians as a Group

Abstract

Byzantine historiography was remarkably resilient. Middle Byzantine historians appeared at a rate of about one every eleven years, while early Byzantine historians had appeared at a rate of about one every eight years.¹ That Byzantine historians were almost as common in the middle period as in the early period is somewhat surprising, because by the seventh century the group that had produced most of the earlier historians had ceased to exist. Most early Byzantine historians came from the class of provincial city councilors called de curions, even if most decurions who became historians moved to Constantinople and became lawyers or civil servants. Yet the class of decurions was already in serious decline by the sixth century, when they felt so burdened by their responsibilities for collecting taxes that many sought to escape their duties by any feasible means. In the early seventh century the decurions vanished as a class, along with the empire’s whole system of civic government. The disappearance of the class that had largely written history was followed, not surprisingly, by a lapse in historiography. Although Byzantium still had prosperous provincial landowners in the middle period, they seem not to have been much interested in education or literature or in moving ¹ For the middle historians see the table on pp. 490–92 below, and for the early historians see the similar table in Treadgold, Early Byzantine Historians, pp. 382–84; but to the forty early historians listed in the latter table, I would now add five more authors of mostly lost histories whom I previously overlooked: Eusebius of Emesa and Euzoïus of Antioch in the fourth century (see above, p. 69 and n. 123), Irenaeus of Tyre in the fifth century (see Millar, Greek Roman Empire, pp. 160, 168–81, and 219–21), Andronicus (of Alexandria?) in the sixth century (see above, p. 69 and n. 122), and the continuer of John of Antioch c. 645.