ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a well-known short story from the fifth century. It concerns the Byzantine emperor Theodosius II, who succeeded his father as emperor in 408 at the age of eight and ruled till his death in 450 when he was still a youthful 49. The story first appears in the sixth-century Byzantine Greek chronicle of John Malalas and then is repeated in chronicle after chronicle for the next millennium. The point is simply that terminology is not much help in making clear what constituted a Byzantine chronicle. The Byzantines at any rate certainly do not make it clear. Over the last century there has been a double switch over the interpretation of the relative reliability of histories and chronicles. Historians' disdain for Manasses despite his evident popularity leads me to my main point. And that is the need for Byzantinists to take a closer look at the cultural value or role of Byzantine chronicles.
