ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why Procopius and Malalas provide two very different but complementary accounts of the events that led to the AD 525–32 war between the Romans and Persians. It argues that each writer tuned his account to his own purpose and that these purposes can be discerned in what they have chosen to include and, equally importantly, omit. Malalas, by contrast, gives an account of a specific crisis in relations in the early 520s, occasioned by the Romans' reception of a former Persian client, the heir to the Laz throne Tzath. His rich description of this event includes details that furnish us with a busy diplomatic context to Procopius' negotiations: Roman–Sasanian peace negotiations had already achieved or were close to achieving peace, when the agreement was suddenly wrecked by Lazika's switch from a Persian to a Roman alliance. Procopius dwells on Persian anxieties about these western conquests and the dispute on the desert frontier.
