ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the four excerpt collections should be understood as historiography and studied next to chronicles and histories as part of Byzantine historiography. In fact, excerpt collections have very rarely, so far, been seen as autonomous pieces of literature. Their importance as works in their own right has been obfuscated by their anonymity and the underestimation of their originality. As a result, scholars usually study them as tools to transmit historical material but not as histories in their own right. This is illustrated by the fact that no history of historiography includes them as autonomous pieces of historical writing, next to histories and chronicles. Collections of historical excerpts consist of a series of passages culled from earlier historical texts. Occasional stylistic simplifications and corrections may imply that collections of historical excerpts addressed a wide audience. It becomes evident that there is coherence to the use of sources in collections of historical excerpts.
