Joannes Zonaras

Little is known about Joannes Zonaras's life. The offices of Grand Commander of the Palace Watch (Μέγας δρουγγάριος τῆς βίγλης) and First Secretary of the Chancery (Prôtoasêkritês), both duly noted in headings of several manuscripts of his works, mark the apex of his public career (Banchich and Lane, 2006:2). At some point, he retreated to the monastery of St Glyceria on present-day Ineir Adasi in the Bay of Tuzla, where he completed his Epitome of Histories in time for the mid-twelfth-century historian Michael Glycas to quote him by name. The date, place, and circumstances of his death are unknown (Banchich and Lane, 2006:2-3). Banchich and Lane (2006:1) characterize Epitome of Histories as follows:

John Zonaras’ Epitome of Histories recounts events from creation through the death of the emperor Alexius Comnenus in 1118 CE — about 6,619 years by Byzantine reckoning. Composed in the first half of the twelfth century and the most substantial extant historical work written in Greek between Cassius Dio’s Roman History of the early third century AD and the fall of Constantinople, it comprises three substantial volumes and slightly more than 1,700 pages of text in its best modern edition. The production of the original copy would have required much time, labor, and expense: the large number of manuscripts of the Epitome and its early translation into a number of languages are measures of the esteem it long commanded. Yet since the advent of modern scholarship in the nineteenth century, few have thought there was any good reason to read the whole Epitome, fewer have attempted to do so, and fewer still have finished the job.

This was not so much because the Epitome was dull or inaccurate as because it was largely derivative. Indeed, Zonaras explains in his Prologue that he aimed at originality only in his wish to make earlier histories more accessible by presenting them in a new fashion. For him this entailed staking out a middle ground between barebones abbreviation and overly detailed recapitulation. He would eschew speeches and learned excurses, but, at the same time, maintain a style, tone, and level of engagement with his material worthy of an intelligent readership. In the event, the outcome was neither proper history in a classicizing mode nor chronicle, but a unique epitome of histories.

Epitome of Histories (aka Annales ) is subdivided into 18 books. Book XV covers 717 - 829 CE. Over 72 manuscripts exist. A Slavonic version was translated in the 14th century CE and an Aragonese version also exists (Neville, 2018:196).