Slavs in the Chronicle of John Malalas

The Chronicle of John Malalas contains very little information about Slavs. In fact, the chronicle is primarily known for the glosses in one of its manuscripts referring to Svarog. Nevertheless, there is also a mention of Slavs in it in connection with the events of 559 AD.

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129.  “In the month of March of the 7th indiction the Huns and the Slavs made an attack on Thrace.  They killed many in battle and took some captives, including the magister militum Sergius, the son of Bacchus, and Edermas, major domo of Kalopodios, making them prisoners.  They found parts of the wall of Constantinople had collapsed and, entering there, they raided as far as Saint Stratonikos.  Everyone fled with their possessions into the city.  On being informed of this, the emperor conscripted many and sent them to the Long Wall.  They engaged the enemy there and many Romans, especially scholarii, were killed.  Then the emperor ordered that the silver kibouria and silver altar tables that were outside the city be removed while the scholae, the protectores, the numeri and the whole senate guarded all the gates of the Theodosian wall.  When the emperor saw that the barbarians were staying put, he ordered the patrician Belisarios to march out against them with some other members of the senate.  Belisarios took every horse, including those of the emperor, of the hippodrome, of religious establishments and from every ordinary man who had a horse.  He armed his troops and led them out to the village of Chiton.  He made an entrenched camp and began to capture some of the enemy and kill them.  Next he ordered trees to be cut and dragged behind the army.  The wind blew up a cloud of dust, which drifted over the barbarians.  They, thinking that an enormous force was there, fled and went to the district of Saint Stratonikos at Dekaton.  When they learned from scouts that a great garrison force was at the walls of Constantinople, they went to the region of Tzouroulon, Arkadioupolis and Saint Alexander of Zoupara and remained encamped there until holy Easter.  After the feast of Easter, the emperor went out to Selymbria and everyone from the city went with him to rebuild the Long Wall where the barbarians had entered.  The emperor remained there until August.  Then the emperor ordered double-prowed ships to be built to go to the Danube and oppose the barbarians as they crossed and make war on them.  When the barbarians discovered this, they asked through an envoy to be allowed to cross the Danube safely.  The emperor sent Justin, his nephew, the curopalates, to conduct them.”

The translation is from the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies (Elizabeth Jeffreys, Michael Jeffreys, Roger Scott and others).  Here is a nice review of the same by Michael Whitby (who translated, among other things, the Theophylact Simocatta chronicle):

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February 25, 2016

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