A NEW PERIODIZATION | 75But if Eusebius’s link between the Church and a Rome now defeated not
triumphant meant for some that the last days were at hand, others were more
optimistic about the durability of the Eusebian model.^59 One such was the
historian Orosius (d. 418), who went so far as to make Christ a Roman citi-
zen (because of the census), while his Histories against the pagans did much
to form the Latin West’s view of its past.^60 In the Greek East, Eusebius’s Eccle-
siastical history found a string of continuators down to Evagrius (d. after
594), as long as the Constantinian model seemed to work at least in the East.
All of them interwove the Church’s affairs with the fortunes of empire,
viewed of course from varying ecclesiastical standpoints^61 —which has un-
doubtedly skewed our whole view of late Antiquity, but on the other hand
legitimately reflects the concerns of then influential bodies of opinion. Those
who expected the world to end in 500 were disappointed; yet ecclesiastical
historians continued to adapt.^62 What had started with Eusebius as a thor-
oughly “late antique” genre was gradually stretched into something less ex-
pectant, to cope with the all too gradual unfolding of time.
The Arab conquests and the rise of Islam put such a question mark over
this view of history—or at least gave East Rome such a jolt—that Evagrius
found no continuator in Greek. Greek secular historiography likewise came
to an end with Theophylact Simocatta, and—for a time—Greek chronicle
writing too, with the Paschal chronicle; both works were produced c. 630. In
the Muslim world, though, things were different. Here most Christians,
whether Church of the East, Chalcedonian, or anti- Chalcedonian (miaphy-
site), preferred to write in Syriac. Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical history and his
Chronicle had been translated,^63 and miaphysite historians in particular went
on compiling, either more or less under Eusebius’s influence, chronicles such
as that of Jacob of Edessa (d. 708)—a tradition that culminated in the great
syntheses by Michael the Syrian (d. 1199) and Gregory Bar Hebraeus (d.
1286), attending to East Rome and the Caliphate as well as their own
Church. This resolutely anti- Chalcedonian communion modeled itself,
though, on the persecuted Jews of Old Testament times—which is why old-
style ecclesiastical histories proved harder to write than chronicles.^64
59 Inglebert, Romains chrétiens [3:42] 505–681.
60 Orosius, Histories against the pagans [ed. and tr. (French) M.- P. Arnaud- Lindet (Paris 1990–
91)], esp. 6.22.4–9.
61 On divergences from and criticisms of Eusebius’s model, see Inglebert, Interpretatio Christiana
[3:31] 332, 535–36.
62 M. Meier, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians (Göttingen 2003) 11–22.
63 M. Debié, “L’héritage de l’historiographie grecque,” in M. Debié (ed.), L’historiographie syriaque
(Paris 2009) 11, 21–24; cf. K. Pinggéra, “Nestorianische Weltchronistik: Johannes Bar Penkāyē und Elias
von Nisibis,” in M. Wallraff (ed.), Julius Africanus und die christliche Weltchronistik (Berlin 2006) 277 n. 69.
64 Debié, in Debié (ed.), L’historiographie syriaque [3:63] 24–27; A. Palmer, “Les chroniques
brèves syriaques,” in the same volume, 71, 83. Even Momigliano, Classical foundations [2:110] 145, was
unaware of any Eusebian tradition in Syriac after John of Ephesus (d. c. 585).