ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how chroniclers wrote about Justinian across six centuries. That the Byzantines remembered Justinian, like Constantine, as one of the great emperors, does not really need demonstration. Malalas' book 18 is devoted to Justinian and is by far the longest book in the Chronicle. Malalas is often criticised, understandably, for providing just a collection of snippets of information rather than any kind of worthwhile narrative. Malalas' version rather than Prokopios' is accepted in the next surviving chronicle, the Chronicon Paschale. Written in about AD 630, its main thrust is on the calculation of the date of Easter, its author probably having been on the staff of Hagia Sophia. Zonaras' sober and more carefully researched chronicle then provides the narrative basis for Constantine Manasses' invention of the verse chronicle. It is verse that allows for the literary development of Belisarios' exploits and more particularly his suffering and unjust treatment and the unfairness of human fate.
