..., several conflagrations, and a Persian sack. These events are reported in highly dramatic accounts by John Malalas and Procopius. Based on such reports, scholars since the nineteenth century have often interpreted these disasters as the starting point for a general decline of the city beginning...

.... This is certainly true of the account of Alexander in the Chronographia of John Malalas, the seminal work of the Byzantine chronicle tradition. The men surrounding Alexander are referred to repeatedly, in marked contrast to the other historical personages who feature in the Chronographia . The terms that Malalas...