Malchus (historian)
Encyclopedia
Malchus was a Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 historian. According to Suda
Suda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

 Malchus was a Byzantine; but Photius states that he was a native of Philadelphia; and his Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

c name makes it probable that Philadelphia was the ancient Rabbah
Rabbah
Rabbah - "Rabbath of the children of Ammon," thechief city and capital of the Ammonites, among the eastern hills, some 20miles east of the Jordan, on the southern of the two streams...

 in the country of Ammonitis, east of the River Jordan.

Malchus probably followed his profession of rhetorician or sophist at Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

. According to Suda
Suda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

, he wrote a history extending from the reign of Constantine I
Constantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...

 to that of Anastasius I
Anastasius I (emperor)
Anastasius I was Byzantine Emperor from 491 to 518. During his reign the Roman eastern frontier underwent extensive re-fortification, including the construction of Dara, a stronghold intended to counter the Persian fortress of Nisibis....

; but the work in seven books, of which Photius has given an account (Bibl. cod. 78), and to which he gives the title , comprehended only the period from the final sickness of the Eastern emperor Leo I
Leo I (emperor)
Leo I was Byzantine Emperor from 457 to 474. A native of Dacia Aureliana near historic Thrace, he was known as Leo the Thracian ....

 (473 or 474), to the death of Julius Nepos
Julius Nepos
Julius Nepos was Western Roman Emperor de facto from 474 to 475 and de jure until 480. Some historians consider him to be the last Western Roman Emperor, while others consider the western line to have ended with Romulus Augustulus in 476...

, emperor of the West (480). It has been supposed that this was an extract from the work mentioned by Suidas, or a mutilated copy: that it was incomplete is said by Photius himself, who says that the start of the first of the seven books showed that the author had already written some previous parts, and that the close of the seventh book showed his intention of carrying it further, if his life was spared.

Some scholars, among them Valesius
Henri Valois
Henri Valois or in classical circles, Henricus Valesius, was a philologist and a student of classical and ecclesiastical historians...

, have thought that the history of Malchus began with Leo's sickness, and that he was the continuator of Priscus, whose history is supposed to have left off at that point. Barthold Georg Niebuhr
Barthold Georg Niebuhr
Barthold Georg Niebuhr was a Danish-German statesman and historian who became Germany's leading historian of Ancient Rome and a founding father of modern scholarly historiography. Classical Rome caught the admiration of German thinkers...

 supposed that this coincidence arose from Photius having met with a portion only of the work of Malchus, which had been inserted in some historical Catena
Catena
The word catena has various meanings:*The Latin word for "chain"*Catena *Catenary, a type of curve in mathematics*A chain of similarly sized impact craters, in planetary geology...

 after the work of Priscus
Priscus
Priscus of Panium was a late Roman diplomat, sophist and historian from Rumelifeneri living in the Roman Empire during the 5th century. He accompanied Maximinus, the ambassador of Theodosius II, to the court of Attila in 448...

; or that the history of the previous period had been given by Malchus in another work. Suidas speaks of the history in its whole extent; it may have been published in successive parts, as the author was able to finish it; and Photius possibly had met with only one part.

Photius praises the style of Malchus as a model of historical composition; pure, free from redundancy and consisting of well-selected words and phrases. He notices also his eminence as a rhetorician, and says that he was favourable to Christianity; a statement which has been thought inconsistent with the praises for Pamprepius
Pamprepius
Pamprepius was a philosopher and a Pagan poet who rebelled against the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno....

. The works of Malchus are lost, except the portions contained in the of Constantine VII
Constantine VII
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos or Porphyrogenitus, "the Purple-born" was the fourth Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, reigning from 913 to 959...

, and some extracts in Suda.
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