Pseudo-Simeon (or Pseudo-Symeon Magistros) is the conventional name given to the anonymous author of a late 10th-century

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

chronicle which survives in a single

codex The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

, Parisinus Graecus 1712, copied in the 12th or 13th century. It is a

universal history A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of mankind as a whole, coherent unit. A universal chronicle or world chronicle typically traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to t ...

from the creation of the world to the year 963.

Herbert Hunger Herbert Hunger (9 December 1914 – 9 July 2000) was an Austrian Byzantinist. Hunger was born and died in Vienna. From 1973 to 1982 he served two consecutive terms as president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Literary works * ''Lexikon ...

: ''Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, XII. Byzantinisches Handbuch. 5,1. Philosophie, Rhetorik, Epistolographie, Geschichtsschreibung, Geographie'', C. H. Beck, Munich 1978, pp. 355 ff. His main sources are

Theophanes the Confessor Theophanes the Confessor ( el, Θεοφάνης Ὁμολογητής; c. 758/760 – 12 March 817/818) was a member of the Byzantine aristocracy who became a monk and chronicler. He served in the court of Emperor Leo IV the Khazar before taking u ...

and

Symeon Logothete Symeon Logothete (or Symeon Magister) was a 10th-century Byzantine Greek historian and poet. Symeon wrote a world chronicle that goes from Genesis creation narrative, Creation to the year 948.It has been False attribution, misattributed to one Theo ...

. For the years up to 812, he uses Theophanes,

George Hamartolos George Hamartolos or Hamartolus ( el, ) was a monk at Constantinople under Michael III (842–867) and the author of a chronicle of some importance. Hamartolus is not his name but the epithet he gives to himself in the title of his work: "A compen ...

John Malalas John Malalas ( el, , ''Iōánnēs Malálas''; – 578) was a Byzantine chronicler from Antioch (now Antakya, Turkey). Life Malalas was of Syrian descent, and he was a native speaker of Syriac who learned how to write in Greek later in ...

and

John of Antioch John of Antioch may refer to: People from Antioch * John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), born in Antioch, archbishop of Constantinople * John Scholasticus (died 577), born in Antioch, patriarch of Constantinople from 565 to 577 * John Malalas (died 578 ...

. For later years, he uses parts of

Joseph Genesius Genesius ( el, Γενέσιος, ''Genesios'') is the conventional name given to the anonymous Byzantine author of Armenian origin of the tenth century chronicle, ''On the reign of the emperors''. His first name is sometimes given as Joseph, combini ...

and the anonymous ''Chronicle'' on Leo the Armenian. He made use of a lost anti-Photian tract that was also used by

Niketas David Paphlagon Niketas David Paphlagon ( gr, Νικήτας Δαβὶδ Παφλαγών), also known as Nicetas the Paphlagonian or Nicetas of Paphlagonia, was a prolific Byzantine Greek writer of the late 9th and early 10th century. Older scholarship dated Nike ...

George Kedrenos George Kedrenos, Cedrenus or Cedrinos ( el, Γεώργιος Κεδρηνός, fl. 11th century) was a Byzantine Greek historian. In the 1050s he compiled ''Synopsis historion'' (also known as ''A concise history of the world''), which spanned the ...

used Pseudo-Simeon as the model for his own chronicle up to the year 812. In the 14th century, the chronicle was translated into Slavonic.

References

External links

Parisinus Graecus 1712
— online facsimiles from the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

Pseudepigraphy 10th-century Byzantine historians Pseudonymous writers {{textual-criticism-stub